Prove to me that Love is Strength (slight AU)
by queerfemme
Summary: What happens when Cora comes to town? An AU version of Emma and Snow returning to Storybrooke and the events thereafter, in which Regina and Emma have to take each others' hearts to protect themselves from Cora. Swan Queen with a bit of Red Beauty and Sleeping Warrior. Gold, Hook, Neal, and the Little Mermaid also guest star. *trigger warning* for rape in Chapter 20.
1. Preface

It had happened gradually for Regina, surrounded by places they'd been together - fighting, fucking, both, and also, sometimes, sharing a rare afternoon or evening of truce (for Henry's sake, they told themselves) - and spending precious hours, gradually granted by David, interacting with their son, who was learning to truly love - and even like - both of his moms.

So the realization that she genuinely loved the woman she'd been ritualistically hate-fucking (before the younger woman got sucked into another realm, busy saving the older woman's soul) had happened over time, over memories, over watching the sheriff's lopsided grin overtake their son's face, over grappling with the meaning of "she's not dying," over coping with "then love again." The realization that she already did was overwhelming, even appalling - really, the arrogance of the blonde, clomping around in those boots and those horrendous jackets like she had any claim over the town - but it was one that bled through for her over time, culminating in the desperation of the fear she felt as she concluded that Cora must have killed - or worse, overtaken - the blonde, the security of her faith in Emma, knowing her would rather die than let anything hurt Henry (or, she hoped, herself).

Emma had not the luxury of a gradual realization. The shock had hit her hard and fast - much like the brunette herself - as she heard her mother explaining that Regina had loved someone else, had some other True Love, some man. She felt no hostility, oddly, towards the man himself: only heartbreak at Regina's pain and obviously continued grieving, and an overwhelmingly sharp pang as she realized what she thought must be the case - that Regina could only have one True Love, so it could never be her. _Why the hell would I care?_ Her world spun out of control and she let cold anger at her own heart's betrayal of her rules against love take over her as she spoke the words that she was surprised to hear coming from her own lips: "Regina. That's who we should blame."

She found herself desperate to know the answer to one question, a question that would change everything. She thought she'd seen something far deeper than angry lust in Regina's eyes on those rare, brief occasions that she was let in before being violently chucked out again: when Henry was trapped in the mine; when Emma, letting her own guard down, tenderly kissed the inside of the older woman's thigh as she recovered from a deep orgasm into the blonde's mouth; when the brunette had admitted to being the Evil Queen; when she allowed Emma, at Henry's insistence, to tuck him into bed after one of their sanctioned evenings at Granny's together, and Emma had caught the older woman gazing at her with something almost akin to shocked reverence and reluctant adoration as she read Henry a bedtime story, stumbled through an awkward song, and kissed the boy goodnight; when their eyes met as magic flowed through them moments before Emma was pulled into the portal; when the curse was broken: "_You did it._"

But Emma had convinced herself herself that all this was in her imagination, her fantasy, her ego, her wish to give Henry more stability. Now, forced to acknowledge her own love - why else would she have reacted so strongly to Mary Margaret's revelation? - she could feel it, just feel it, that persistent hope that maybe Regina shared her feelings, that she wasn't imagining the depth of affection in those stolen moments. If only she could know - and the desire to know threatened to consume her - whether it was possible for Regina - for anyone - to have more than one True Love in a lifetime...


	2. Wordless Confession

_In which Emma and Mary Margaret return and a confession is made without words and in which I snarkily reference another fan fic I wrote in which Regina plays whack-a-mole with Henry post-nightmare._

* * *

"I knew it! I knew it!" Henry's ecstatic screams were smothered by a combination of his mother's jacket and blonde mane as she dropped to her knees, tears burning her eyes, to embrace her son.

She vaguely registered Mary Margaret hugging Ruby and rapidly conversing with someone, about Cora following them by sea, probably only a few hours behind, and it wasn't until she heard _that voice_ responding to her that she realized who else was present in the clearing.

She kissed Henry on the cheek rapidly and firmly, one more time, gave him a winning smile and a signal to wait, before she got up and strode towards Regina.

She took the older woman roughly by the shoulders, pushing her back into the nearest tree.

"Emma!" she heard Henry's concerned and bewildered voice behind her and responded without taking her wild green eyes off of Regina's slightly widened, simmering-under-a-calm-surface brown ones. "It's okay, Henry," Emma called to him, "I just need a couple of questions answered."

"Emma, I need to get to David, we don't have time for - "

"We need to make time for this, Mary Margaret. It won't take long." Out of the corner of her eye, she felt Ruby's gaze locked on the two women as she gestured for her best friend to wait until her daughter was done getting answers to whatever it was she needed to ask.

Emma held her face, her lips, mere centimeters from Regina's. Neither woman blinked, both struggling to ignore the immense, magical tingling that had arisen between their bodies the moment they touched. Emma wondered wildly what had overtaken her, if it was possible that some form of dark magic had possessed her from the moment Mary Margaret had told her about the death of Regina's True Love, the explanation for her long unanswered, "How in the hell did you get like this?"

"Do you believe that someone can have more than one True Love in their lifetime?"

There was a silence that permeated the woods; not just an absence of sound, but of movement, of breath. No one, not even Rumpelstiltskin, was able to interrupt the women's charged reunion, particularly after watching - feeling - the purple fog, laced with golden threads of magic, emanate from their contact, trembling hands on subtly quaking shoulders.

"I see that your mother hasn't quite broken her habit of spreading secrets that aren't hers to tell," Regina responded after a moment of stunned silence. Whatever she had been expecting the blonde to ask her, it certainly hadn't been that.

Henry wasn't quite sure of what was going on between the two women, but was dimly aware that only True Love could create magic like that... couldn't it? He swayed in anxious anticipation, rooted to the spot.

Emma indelicately - though not, Henry noted, hard enough to actually harm the brunette - shook Regina's shoulders and almost stomped her foot in desperate exasperation.

"_Regina_," she choked rawly, almost in a while, annunciating the "i." Then softer, slower, swiping her finger upon Regina's chin, trying not to notice the sparks of magic formed by each new touch, she murmured a word that didn't come very naturally to her: "_Please_," hoping against hope that she didn't sound as nearly as desperate as she felt.

The older woman blinked, slowly, taken aback by the gentleness of Emma's touch, the vulnerability of her question, the frenzied, denied heartbreak in her desperation to have an answer, stunned by the gravity of the lightness her own heart felt at gazing once again into this woman's eyes, at being touched by her, at hearing her voice, the knowledge that nothing short of love - not the rage and lust she had tried to convince herself that it had been - could have opened that portal, could be creating these soft and powerful jolts of magic now.

Only a few times - when she ripped her father's heart out of his chest; when she promised to marry Daniel; when she pushed her mother into Rumpel's portal; when she had to destroy him to save her son - had Regina felt such an acute sense that her next action would irreversibly alter her life. She recounted briefly in her mind the chaos of emotions towards the blonde that she had experienced while she was trapped in the land Regina had grown up in: anger, forced indifference, bitterness. Immense gratitude. Affection. _Yearning_. Realizing against her will that their often violent dalliances had been allowing them to share a connection that both of them had denied themselves since their teenage years, that they both - until this moment - had refused to acknowledge.

_Then Love Again._

But she knew she already did: only now that it was sanctioned by Daniel, she could stop hiding it in shame, guilt of betrayal, furious fear, desperate panic that finding love after doing so much to avenge Daniel made her entire life a waste. Her lips parted, a nervous smile, like the kind she used to give Daniel, twinkling in her eyes.

"_Yes_."

Emma felt her heart explode in hope, but forced herself to keep her face - and, she hoped, her voice - neutral as she raised her voice, eyes never leaving Regina's newly softened orbs: "Henry."

She heard her son - their son - shuffle forward nervously in response.

"Henry, has Regina been good to you while I was gone? Different than before?"

She felt rather than saw the boy's nod, as she gazed into his mother's eyes. "Yeah, she really has. She only used magic to help people after a while, and she made me pancakes and we even played whack-a-mole - "

Henry trailed off as both women wrenched out of their eye contact to look at him, exasperated but amused. He reflected silently on how similar both of his mothers' expressions were as he tried to keep in check his growing hope that maybe this meant they could love each other and be each others' happiness after all. He started again, a new weight added to his words, understanding their importance: "She's redeeming herself, Emma. She helped bring you back. She _saved_ you. And Mary Margaret. I don't think she's really an Evil Queen anymore." He shifted his eyes to Regina as he spoke, watching tears flood her eyes and a smile form on her lips. Emma smiled at him, too. Her watery eyes locked back with Regina's as her hands slid down her arms to entangle with the older woman's. "Good," she whispered, and the smiles of both women deepened, both intimating what had just been confessed and agreed between them.

They both jumped as Rumpelstiltskin cleared his throat.

"Touching as this budding union between good and evil may be, we have the little matter of your mother to attend to." He was addressing Regina, but as Emma turned to look at him, still holding Regina's hands, her stomach flipped over as she realized that she had a similar dilemma. Her eyes swiveled over Ruby's ecstatic grin to take in Mary Margaret's slack-jawed, wide-eyed face. She felt Regina smirk despite herself, and she resisted the inexplicable urge to do the same.

"Right," Mary Margaret said with finality, more high-pitched than usual. "We have Cora to prepare for. Emma, I - we - we'll talk about - what - we'll discuss you two later. Right now we have a town to save."

"And our son to protect," Emma and Regina interjected simultaneously.

Rumpelstiltskin sighted impatiently as Henry and Ruby giggled conspiratorially and Mary Margaret struggled desperately to close her mouth, which was longing to retort something with the words "young lady," "grounded," "tower," and "what are you THINKING?" jumbled together somehow.

"Yes, and about that, dearies, we haven't much time to prepare ourselves. If we could save the sentimentalities for another time?"

"Right," Emma reasoned, in a nearly perfect imitation of her mother. She tilted her head back to face her love, squeezing her hands in apology for the unwanted return to business, as she asked, "What do we have to do?"

"We've been working on a plan," Regina began, returning Emma's gesture.

"Which now must be altered," Rumpelstiltskin interrupted. "Cora will undoubtedly realize the Savior's newfound magical abilities - "

"But I don't - "

"Oho, dearie, but you do. Maybe not yet on your own, but you and the Queen seem to create a unique blend of particularly powerful magic, which Cora - "

"Wait a moment; I'm confused. What exactly is going on here? Emma has magic? But all that time back in our land..." Mary Margaret had her hands up in front of her, palms outward, trying to stop the inevitable from crashing down on her.

"Oh! You don't know? How precious. Surely you've noticed the - ah - sparks between the deposed Mayor and newly restored Sheriff? Surely you didn't think these sparks of magic were born of hate? Quite the contrary, your Highness. Why, Regina has once again found her Twoo Wuv! This time in the person of Ms. Swan. But try not to look quite so horrified, dearie: isn't this what you've always wanted for your daughter?"

Mary Margaret blinked slowly. Rumpel giggled, gleeful at the general discord, holding up first one finger and then another as he continued his explanation: "Cora will sense the presence of a new form of magic; will identity of whom and what it comes; and seek to eliminate its source."

"So bring it," Emma began, as Rumpel, Snow, Red, and the Queen all lowered their heads in exasperation.

"I'm afraid it's not quite so simple, Ms. Swan," Rumpel began.

"My mother..." Regina interrupted apologetically, but not without strong traces of grief and disgust that sent Emma's thumbs to sweeping a comforting pattern across the backs of her hands. "She has a... knack... for discovering that which is most precious to me and destroying it. We had a plan to protect Henry from her, but now we have to keep you safe as well."

"Unfortunately," Mr. Gold interjected, "the charm with which Regina was planning on protecting young Henry can only work if all of her magical abilities are focused in one direction - "

"Then do it, Regina, I can take care of - "

" - and now that she shares her magical abilities with you, Ms. Swan, that spell is no longer an option, because the magic will be split between three people rather than simply two," Rumpel plowed on.

"Then we won't touch! Henry's our priority, I can take care of - "

"Emma, you don't know Cora as we - " Snow began.

"No." Regina's voice cut in, deep with frustrated terror and threatening to drown Emma with the tears suddenly burning her eyes. "I have lost too much, Emma Swan. I am _not_ going to lose you, too, least of all because of your savior complex gallantry. We can protect _both_ of you, we just need a different - "

"All three of us," Emma interjected. "You figure out some plan that protects you, too, 'Gina, and I'm in."

"Well fortunately there is just such a thing, Ms. Swan. But I'm afraid that the only enchantment powerful enough to protect you all is a curse."

Regina's eyes widened, realizing what Gold was suggesting, and wisely preempted any outbursts from her newly-acknowledged lover, while striding over to place her hands comfortingly on Henry's shoulders.

"Emma, do you trust me?"

Emma considered the brunette who had murdered her own father, tried many times to kill her mother, and crushed the heart of a man she had fucked the night before, while Emma was kissing him. She glanced down at Henry and Regina's love for him, of all the agony she had been through, of the tortures her mother had subjected her to, the manipulations, how she was redeeming herself for him - for both of them? - filled her thoroughly.

"Yes."

Regina smiled at the blonde's conviction and at Snow's look of disbelieving consternation. She looked down at her son. "Henry, do you trust Emma and myself?"

The boy nodded eagerly. Regina took a deep breath as she looked between her son and his mother. "Mr. Gold is going to have to put us all under a curse. But we won't feel cursed if we do this right. The curse will, however, protect us rather effectively from my mother's... specialty," she finished tentatively, apologetically.

"Taking hearts," Henry murmured.


	3. In Which Hearts are Taken Out

In which the Swan-Mills family takes each others' hearts and hands them over to Gold to be cursed.

* * *

"That's right, honey," Regina said, squatting before Henry and looking him in the face. "Henry, do you remember the reason that Emma was the only one who could break the curse on this town?"

He nodded slowly, calm fear in his eyes as Emma squatted beside Regina, one hand on the former mayor's knee and the other on Henry's arm. "She's the product of true love."

Regina nodded. "That's my boy," she breathed, more to herself than to Henry. "Mr. Gold is going to put our hearts in a suspension curse. We won't feel the effects exactly: we will be able to think and act and feel for ourselves, but only because Mr. Gold will elect not to control us. Normally, this curse is a way to control people - "

"Like Cora did! She sent all these zombies after us... We couldn't kill them..." Emma pieced together.

Regina nodded, grimacing, forcing herself not to imagine the horrors Emma must have been subjected to in her land. With any luck, there would be plenty of time to process it all later. As a family.

"Precisely. My mother won't be able to get at our hearts, and she also won't be able to physically kill us. But she won't be able to control us, either: only Mr. Gold will have that power, but he will only use it to keep our hearts safe - Cora won't be able to get at them while they're under his magic. And since - "

"Since we're going to take each others' hearts, out of True Love, not meanness, True Love's Kiss will be able to break the spell, like when Emma saved me!"

"Very good, sweetheart," Regina cooed, ignoring the way Emma was ogling her in shock. "But Emma and I are going to take each others' hearts, then yours. So it will be _our_ kiss that breaks the spell."

Henry suppressed a giggle and Regina, an eye roll, as Emma overbalanced, landing on her ass in the leaves.

"Aren't we missing something here? My daughter is not _evil_ - she doesn't know how to take a heart."

Regina stood to face the mother of her True Love, who used to be the girl she blamed for murdering her first True Love. "We're magically connected now: I'll guide her through it, dear. And now we really must get on with it - Gold needs to enact this curse, there are other preparations to make, and unless I'm mistaken, you have a True Love of your own to awaken."

Emma watched the confrontation with wide eyes, avoiding Ruby's twinkling eyes, glancing instead to her son for support. They exchanged conspiratorial glances, reveling in the mutual satisfaction of seeing their mothers in such a state. Emma swept him into her arms. "I love you, kid."

"I love you, too, Emma. I'm so glad you're home."

"I'm never leaving you again, Henry," she murmured into his hair.

A gentle touch and attendant sparks of magic graces Emma's shoulder. "Are you ready, darling?" Emma's heart leapt, knowing the affectionate address was aimed at her. She kissed Henry's head again before rising.

The women stood in front of each other, silent. "I'll keep you safe. I promise." The weight of Regina's words threatened to overwhelm her, knowing how she'd failed with Daniel. This time would be different.

Emma nodded. "I know you will. And I'll always protect you. But uh... how will I know - "

A light kiss on her cheek soothed and shushed her, magical energy spreading from her cheek throughout her entire being. "You will," Regina whispered. Emma gently wiped a tear from the older woman's eye.

"We can do this, baby," she murmured, trying out a new endearment in case she never got another chance to.

Regina gave a small smile as she slowly put her hand forward into the younger woman's chest. Emma looked down in awe as she watched the intensity of the tingling she felt match the degree of disappearance of her love's hand into her body. As the formerly evil queen pulled her heart out of her chest, Emma fought to keep from swooning. The feeling of so literally - and willingly - giving complete control of her life to a woman she had once - twice - thrice - several times - wanted to kill was exhilarating. She felt the pulsing of her heart pounding against the delicate and strong veins in Regina's hands, felt the heady rush of the morning's breeze against her bare organ, stripped of all protection and being held, almost reverently, in her love's hand.

"Are you alright, my love?" Regina's eyes searched her face as Henry gaped open-mouthed at his mother's heart in his other mother's hand. Emma nodded, dazed.

Realizing Henry's gaze, she smiled down at him and ruffled his hair. "It doesn't hurt at all, kid." She shifted her focus back to Regina.

"Are you ready?" Regina nodded as Emma slowly slid her hand into Regina's chest. Guided by their magical connection, Emma had the heady but unnerving sensation of knowing intimately what she had never learned, feeling no resistance from Regina's clothing, breast, muscles, or bones, just a slight squeezing, not unlike the pulsing, slick muscles of the woman's cunt. But this tingled more. Her eyes never left Regina's, her unoccupied hand not leaving Henry's head, as she felt her fingers, guided by Regina's knowledge, wrap around the powerful pulsation that kept her alive. She withdrew her love's heart and tenderly kissed it, then the seemingly untouched spot on Regina's chest. Tears streaked down Regina's face. "I love you," she whispered. Emma smiled broadly, sweetly, ecstatically. "I love _you,_" she whispered, for the first time to anyone but Henry in over a decade.

Gold silently stepped forward to take both of their hearts into a box he had conjured. Both women turned softly to Henry, who looked a misplaced combination of thrilled and terrified.

"Your mother's right, darling - it really doesn't hurt. And we are not using them to control each other. Nor will Mr. Gold. And when Cora is gone, Emma and I will kiss, and all will be well. Alright, sweetheart?"

Henry nodded. "I trust you both." He paused, looking between them. "When all this is done, we'll be a real family?"

Emma teared. "We already are, kid."

Both women placed one hand on their son's shoulder. "Ready?" they asked him in unison.

"Ready!" he chimed, scared but trusting and eager to feel magic for himself.

Slowly, both of his mothers slipped one hand a piece into his chest, scooping his heart and lightly entwining their fingertips around it. Henry gasped as the magical sparks of their touch ignited inside his body, soaring through him and filling him with a tingling, calming sense of love he hadn't felt since before he found out he was adopted (he hadn't minded that so much as he felt anger that Regina had lied to him for so long. But that was over now.). As his mothers' hands emerged from his chest, sharing his heart between them, his eyes widened. "Cool," he whispered, a smile tugging at his mouth, his eyes sparkling.

"Indeed, Henry," Rumpelstiltskin said softly, as he gestured for the teary-eyed women to place their son's heart alongside theirs. Emma hesitated, turning to Regina.

"You trust him with Henry's life? After all he's done?"

"He helped Henry many times in your absence, Emma. And believe me, Cora is just as big a threat to him as she is to us. Snake he may be - " she threw a glare Gold's way - "but in this, we are allied."

"Rest assured, Ms. Swan: your boy shan't be harmed."

Emma glanced at Henry, who nodded confidently. Mr. Gold had given him that necklace, even before he knew that Cora was an imminent threat. _Maybe it's because he misses his own son so much_, Henry mused.

He watched his mothers place his heart delicately into the box Gold presented them with. He noticed that it was decorated primarily with a crown, being embraced by a beautiful pair of wings, stretched out in flight, like a swan's. He smiled to himself, and thought he saw Rumpelstiltskin's eyes twinkle in responding delight when their eyes met.

It was gone, however, when the next moment, he began murmuring words that Henry could not understand, swiping his hand over, under, and across the chest, blue-black mist sizzling above it.

Gold looked up grimly. "Your hearts belong to me now, dearies. Cora will be unable to control or kill you in this way."

"Right," a clearly distressed Mary Margaret said, stepping forward. "I have a husband to save."

The six nodded, with varying degrees of eagerness or annoyance and, Emma and Regina on either side of Henry, holding his hands in theirs, set back towards the town at a run.


	4. Red Beauty Looks Rumbelle in the Face

"I trust you, 'Gina, but clear something up for me: I get that Cora can't take Henry's heart, and I get that he can't die while Gold has it, but aren't there other things she can - you know - do to him? Kidnap him, things like that?"

"Oh yes, dear." Both women stared at Henry, whom his grandmother had taken to running with at a gestured request from Emma. Emma glanced at Regina, waiting for elaboration, then remembered that the older woman, while healthy, wasn't exactly the running-for-one's-life type: more the stride-in-do-what-you-want-and-stride-out-like-a-boss-in-devastatingly-sexy-heels type. She was breathing much more heavily than Emma, fresh off a beanstalk, was.

"The plan Gold mentioned... that we had... before you came home... we can hide Henry... literally make him invisible..."

"I thought you said you needed to focus all your magic to make that happen, that I dilute it or something?"

"We can... work a similar spell... by combining our... magic... together... Including Henry in the... suspension curse... gives him an... added layer of... protection... and us, as well, since..."

"Since Henry's such a strong part of the love we have."

Regina turned and smiled, breathing through her mouth. "Yes."

Both women stumbled, blushing at the fact that they had overbalanced at the distraction that was the strength of their eye contact.

An enraged shout interrupted their moment, erupting from behind them.

"Absolutely not!"

Gold had stopped running - much as he was capable, with his cane - and was glowering at Ruby, who had her hands on her hips and was glaring back with equal ferocity.

"I will not have some half-breed who slaughtered her own boyfriend tell me how to protect my - "

"Your _what_, exactly? Your property? Because except for that little magic thing-y in the mines, that's exactly how you've been treating her!"

Snow had run back to the scene, Henry hovering in the background, catching his breath against Regina's hips. "Red? What's going on?"

Red rounded on her best friend. "Belle! He expects me to trust him with her protection!"

"And who are you to talk about her protection? Whom, might I ask, have _you_ ever protected?" Gold returned, his face contorted with rage.

Emma watched the two, open mouthed, and glanced at Snow to see if that would help her understand the situation any more than she did. It was clear from the rapidly calculating look on her mother's face that she was just as lost as Emma, but she was staring at her best friend's face and quickly putting it together. Any insight that Snow might have offered, however, was lost, as a new voice entered the scene.

"I actually don't need anyone to protect me, thank you. If you would stop shouting at each other long enough, it might occur to one of you to ask _my_ opinion about my own well-being."

Belle was standing a few feet away from them, clearly winded.

"Belle." Rumpelstiltskin slowly, reverently, advanced towards her. "What are you doing here?"

She took a slight step back from him. "There's a ship approaching the town. The dwarves looked at it through a looking glass, and they said that your mother is on it." She gestured towards Regina. "And there's a man." She looked back towards Rumpel. "Someone said his name is Hook. Does that mean anything to you?"

Regina gasped softly, Emma groaned and flinched almost undetectably (Regina took note and filed it away to ask later, but she could put some pieces together on her own), and Rumpel's eyes widened in rage and - what was it? - fear or delight. Or both.

Belle glanced around and nodded slowly, once. "I see it does. So, what's our plan?"

Red stepped forward, more timid after Belle's admonition. She took a deep breath and looked the lover of the woman she loved fully in the face. "You're number two on Cora's hit list and, if I'm reading your reaction right, number one on Hook's. Regina's mother doesn't know I exist, but she'll find out about Belle. She'll go after her. Please." She turned to Belle. "You don't know what Cora is capable of, Belle. If you want to be the hero, you need to hide: if you don't, you'll be putting so many people at risk, because Gold _will _let all of us die to keep you safe." She took a breath, steadying herself. At the risk of getting killed by Rumpel before she got there, she stepped tentatively towards Belle and took her hands into her own. "For me, that would be a small price to pay for your safety, but I know you don't want that, Belle. Please. Let me protect you like you've protected me."

Belle blinked away the tears in her eyes and tried to scoff. She put her hands on Ruby's shoulders. "If I recall, when I last tried to protect you, you left me chained up in the basement of the library."

Emma cocked her eyebrow and nodded her approval, running a suggestive finger across Regina's ass. Glancing at Henry, Regina smacked Emma's hand away. But a twinkle in her eye and a tug on her lips told Emma that her mind had gone to the same place hers had.

Belle inhaled and bobbed her head about for a bit, conceding Belle's point. "Okay, but different situation. Cora - "

" - is apparently about to arrive in Storybrooke, and we really do not have time for this."

"For once, we agree, Gold: time is precious. I have to save my husband" Snow interjected. She put her hand on Belle's back. "Honey, I know we don't know each other, but you need to listen to Red, and you need to do it quickly. She has saved my life _so_ many times, and Gold, I'm sorry, but Red's right in this: Cora will target you almost immediately, not to mention Hook. Show Red how to protect her: she's great in a fight and it'll take them a long time to figure out that Belle's protection rests with her, anyway. Please."

Gold did not take his eyes off of Ruby the entire time Snow was speaking. Red returned his gaze steadily. Belle looked between them, biting her bottom lip.

"Rumpelstiltskin, are you sure there's no way I can be of help other than to - to hide?"

"There's no cowardice in hiding, Belle," Rumpel said so softly that almost no one heard him. Regina was suddenly staring at the ground as though it were the most intriguing space in this realm.

Belle smiled softly. "I know there isn't, you brave man. That was never why I called you 'coward.'" They held each other's eyes for a long moment before Belle took his face into her hands and kissed him gently, chastely, on the mouth. Everyone present averted their eyes, and Snow took deep note of the tears that flourished in Red's.

Belle turned to Red, taking her hands into those that had just been on the Dark One's face. "Do whatever you will with me, Ruby" she said, her voice deep and rich, implying much more than protection.

The conflict clear on his face, Gold positioned himself behind Ruby. She shuddered, disliking her inability to see the man, but knew that Belle was watching him closely. He placed his hands on Ruby's shoulders.

"You need to let go, Ruby. I'm going to send magic through you now. It shouldn't hurt, if you're open to its flow."

"What's it going to do?" Ruby asked, trying to keep the lilt of panic out of her voice.

"You trust this woman, Belle?" Rumpel asked over Red's shoulder. She nodded without hesitation, licking her lips slightly, unconsciously, as she steadily held Red's gaze.

Rumpelstiltskin addressed Ruby again. "I am going to transfer all my memories of my life with Belle into your mind."

"Oof," Emma and her mother murmured simultaneously, knowing how difficult that would be for their friend.

"This will keep them out of the surface of my mind, so that Cora can't access them. I can't offer you much protection beyond that, Belle, because I am working through a non-magical conduit."

"What about her... heart?" Snow asked softly.

"If I take it, Cora will know: I will have taken it out of my own love, and she will sense that in a way that she won't be able to sense the curse I've placed on your hearts, which you took from each other out of love and gave me willingly. It changes the nature of the magic, you see. All magic has its price: I won't risk Belle paying that price. But if we're successful here, Cora won't even know of Belle's existence. She can look after young Henry - if you'd be willing," he ended in a question at his love. Belle smiled at the little boy, and he grinned back, charmed.

"Of course," Belle whispered. "Do you like to read, Henry?"

"Oh yes," he said, smiling.

"We'll have a jolly good time together then."

"And I'll keep watch over them," Red stated, a bit unnecessarily. "Will you be alright, Snow?"

Snow smiled knowingly at her friend. "I would never stand between you and your - " she considered her words carefully - "new friendship."

Belle was staring at Rumpelstiltskin. "Wait a moment. Rumpel, if you forget me, won't you become - won't you forget what it feels like to love?"

"No, Belle. I won't know enough about you to allow Cora to sense my thoughts and identify you, but I will be able to feel, only in my heart, what we've shared. And the memories will be restored as soon as the threat is over. Now really, love, we must get on with this. Ready?"

The women standing in front of him both nodded, locking eyes as magic flooded from Rumpel's fingers into Red's shoulders, her throat, her lips, her cheeks, her nose, her temples, her mind. Her heart.

Rumpel gazed around him, looking as disoriented as Red felt. He looked past Belle as though he couldn't see her.

Suddenly he stiffened, mirrored by Regina and, for reasons that she only dimly understood, Emma.

The Queen and the Dark One exchanged a heavy, almost panicked glance. They had both felt the shudder rip through the town, the sharp chill in magical energy tearing through them like a thunderclap. Emma, connected magically to Regina since their touch made Jefferson's hat work, felt it also, knew it was ominous. She didn't know quite how to identify exactly what caused the feeling, but Regina and Rumpel did.

Cora had arrived in Storybrooke.


	5. Perspectives on a Moment

For reasons Rumpelstiltskin couldn't quite understand - couldn't quite remember - he felt fear. Profound, deep fear, a bone-penetrating terror that he hadn't known since before he had stabbed that first soldier on his path to saving Bae and all the other children. As he watched Regina and Emma, now near the edge of the woods, running with Henry (they had all agreed to hold off on using magic as long as possible, including to transport from place to place, to make it more difficult for Cora to locate them); as he watched Snow sprint off on her own towards his shop, towards her husband; and as he watched Ruby taking the hand of a beautiful young woman who kept glancing back at him, retreating to wait some distance away from Regina, Henry, and Emma, he tried to fathom what the source of this newfound weakness was.

Whatever it was, he had power now, and plenty of it. Cora's first priority would be dealing with her daughter. He had everything he needed to prepare for Cora's destruction right here in the woods, anyway. He wondered just how sweet it would be to watch Cora's soul be wrenched out of her mouth. He couldn't accomplish it with her daughter, but all he had to do was get close enough to her mother, and the wraith would do the rest. His inexplicable fear diminished, and he smiled as he set off towards where he had left his knife and the ornament he would need to summon hell itself upon Cora. This was going to be an enjoyable day.

* * *

They locked hands as they ran, interweaving their fingers in a way that Ruby used to do with Peter but that Belle had never experienced: Rumpel wasn't much for holding hands, and Gaston found it undignified, both to run with a woman and to hold hands with one. Despite her fear, Belle found the contact exhilarating.

She glanced at the fierce determination in Ruby's eyes, after looking back for a third time at Rumpelstiltskin, wondering if he really would remain unchanged now that he had no conscious memories of her. Of love.

"You're scared, Ruby," she observed as she struggled to keep her balance while running in stilettos. Red noticed her discomfort and relaxed her pace, knowing they had to wait for Henry anyway.

Red looked at her, somewhat askance. "This woman - Regina's mother - is responsible for so much destruction, Belle. She gives your _boyfriend_ a serious run for his money. So yeah, I'm a bit on the freak-out side."

Stung by the disdain in the other woman's voice, Belle stopped. Red noted that she didn't break their contact, but said nothing more, hoping her eyes weren't betraying her. "He's a good man, Ruby. Or, he could be."

"Everyone could be," Ruby responded softly, kicking aside a few stray pebbles as she disconnected their hands and walked to the edge of the forest and stopped, watching idly behind her as Regina and Emma caught up to them, closer to Gold's shop than they were, with Henry.

"Ruby." The sheer amount of salaciousness that Belle managed to pump into those two syllables intoxicated the werewolf. She watched in awe as Belle locked eyes with her, reclaiming her hands in her cum. "I love him. I can't help but want to help him because I care for him so deeply. You need to accept that I love him, Ruby, despite - and maybe because of - everything he is." Red shook her head and looked away, full of memories that Rumpel had transferred into her mind. Belle gently turned her face back to hers.

"You're not listening to me, Ruby - Red - and I need you to. I love Rumpelstiltskin, because I truly care for him, but I - I _desire _you. I _love_ you."

Ruby felt her heart rapidly expanding and contracting, fluttering so loudly in her chest that she'd be damned if the old bastard couldn't have heard it from where he was still hobbling about, deeper in the woods

"And that kiss you just gave him was..." she asked.

"For good luck. In the hopes that he will be safe, that he won't resort to revenge again. It was only a kiss to offer him safety and support." Belle stepped closer into her friend's space, still touching her face. Ruby slowly licked her lips and swallowed - hard.

"Want to offer me safety and support?" She knew the cheesy line was beneath her, but it charmed Belle as the knew it would, as the blue-eyed woman smiled deeply and slowly guided Red's face to her moist, parted lips.

Both women jumped apart at the loud bang that erupted from Gold's shop, followed by the dwarves spilling out and Grumpy sprinting in the lead towards Emma.

"Snow," Ruby murmured, and the two dashed towards Regina, Henry, and Emma, where the dwarves were congregating to deliver their ominous news.

* * *

Henry's short legs had slowed his mothers' progress toward the town. Snow had run off toward Gold's shop to wake David before Cora could find any of them, and Belle and Ruby were waiting at the edge of the forest, having careened towards the library, holding hands, waiting for Henry. No one seemed concerned with Gold; as Regina put it, despite of (because of?) his bad leg, his magic could get him anywhere he pleased, at any time. At the edge of town - having emerged from the forest very close to Gold's shop - the family paused to catch their breath and to send Henry off with the waiting pair, to what they desperately hoped would be safety. Before they could begin, however, a loud bang and several shouts emanated from down the street. They turned and saw the dwarves being violently repelled from its doors, its bell twinkling banally in their wake, Grumpy in the lead.

"Emma! The Queen's mother has Charming and Sn - " he paused mid-shout upon realizing the Queen's presence, but it didn't matter. Emma and Regina, ignoring the utter plummeting in the cores of their stomachs, nodded at Grumpy and knelt immediately beside Henry.

"Honey, Emma and I are going to make you invisible to anyone with dark magic. That might include me, for a while, but you mustn't be frightened. Ruby and Belle will keep you safe in the library." She glanced up at the women, who had come running. They nodded at her. Emma kissed the boy's forehead.

"But Cora's so powerful. You - "

"Shh, Henry, your mom and I will be fine. Promise. Just stay in the library." He nodded, throat too tight with tears and paralyzing fear to speak.

As Regina and Emma laced hands over Henry's head, murmuring words the blonde had never heard but somehow understood, Henry felt... nothing. Emma and Henry glanced up at Regina, nonplussed and terrified. The spell wasn't working.

"My mother," Regina said, her voice tight with terror. "She knows we're here. She's interfering with my magic somehow." She turned to Henry, trying to keep the tremors our of her voice. "Henry, darling, you'll be fine. Emma and I will not let anything happen to you. Go to the library: no sneaking out, do you understand?"

He nodded and threw himself at both of his mom's, wrapping them in a tight hug. Both women kissed him passionately on the cheek and watched him briefly as he set off, with a deliberately brave face but terrified wave, towards the library with the budding couple. They turned to look at each other.

"Whatever we face, we face together," Emma swore to the brunette, surrounded by bewildered dwarves. At Regina's grateful grimace, they set off at a run toward Gold's shop, instructing the dwarves to sound the alarm that all children must remain indoors, as hidden and protected from Cora as possible.

* * *

The bell to Rumpelstiltskin's shop clanged violently as Snow burst in, streaming through the main room in no time at all, thrusting herself into the back room where she knew, instinctively, that David lay in. He was surrounded by the seven, once eight, dwarves, who embraced her solemnly as she stared at her prince, desperate to kiss him. She vaguely lifted her hand to swat gently at an insect that hovered past her face as she knelt before Charming.

She leaned in to kiss him and was blasted back forcefully by an invisible barrier. Doc rushed forward and caught her, his face pale as she again heard an insect buzz past her face. Her heart stopped.

"_Cora_," she whispered.

"Oh, very perceptive, darling Snow," a voice sounded from the space immediately next to her face, singed from the blast. A puff of purple smoke announced Cora's transformation from insect to human, smiling as a shout went up amongst the dwarves, who all reached for their axes. Cora merely laughed, blasting all of them clear out of the back room and out the front door of the shop.

Before Snow White had another chance to move, Cora had swished her hand and bound her, head to foot, with tight black bonds, completing the ensemble with a blood red gag. Snow struggled defiantly, glaring up at Cora. Cora took her chin into her hand, forcing her face to be still.

"Oh, dear Snow, if only you knew how good it feels to finally be giving your daughter what she's always wanted." Her other hand hovered close to Snow's chest and she trembled inadvertently as Cora seemed to be resisting plunging it into her being and bringing her heart out herself. "Regina will be so pleased that I am finally giving her what she has never been able to complete on her own: her revenge."

The shop's bell tinkled again and Cora smiled broadly.

"My daughter," she breathed ecstatically. She turned to look at Snow imperiously. "And now, my darling girl, the fun begins."


	6. Temptation: Neal's Return, Cora's Demand

Regina skidded to a halt just inside the threshold of the back room, taking in the scene: she sensed the magical barrier around David and felt with all-too-accurate memories just how tight Snow's bonds were. The sight of her mother boiled her blood and brought acid from her stomach rushing up into her throat. She hated the love that also rushed into her being.

"_Regina_," Cora breathed passionately.

"Mother," Regina deadpanned.

"I missed you, my daughter," Cora said imperiously, moving forward with her arms open. Regina didn't move as Cora placed her arms somewhat awkwardly around her, feeling more and more like the 18-year-old she used to be by the moment.

Emma's eyes were wide with nervous horror as she kept her eyes on her own mother, helplessly laying behind Cora. Emma tried to take advantage of Cora's evident distraction with her daughter, slipping slowly behind her.

Without moving her hands from Regina's back, Cora magicked Emma into a nearby wall, slamming her head back and opening a geyser of blood from the back of her head. Snow's screams were muffled but audible, and Cora gestured subtly towards her, cutting off her yells mid-sound.

"What have you _done_?" Regina groaned at her mother, wrenching herself away from her embrace and running across the room to hold Emma, waving her hand above her head, sealing her wound and cleaning the blood from her hair, glancing up and watching in despair as more and more burns appeared on David's skin, as the effects of the fire-y room seemed to be manifesting physically on him as it had with Henry, thanks to the powerful barrier of dark magic that Cora had placed between David and his love.

"Everything you've ever wanted, dear," Cora smiled, advancing imperiously on Regina. Emma moved to rise and step in front of the woman's daughter, but Regina touched her hip gently, imploring her to stay where she was, safe in Regina's lap. The magic that ran through both of their bodies at the slight contact steeled both of them for whatever was to come.

"I have separated Snow White from her happiness, and saved her, struggling like the irritating twit she's always been, for death at your hands. What I've _done_, Regina, is given you your happy ending."

"You _destroyed_ my happy ending, Mother," Regina raised her voice slightly, fire literally conjuring itself in her hands as she gently extracted herself from Emma and rose in front of her mother. She held her hands still, refusing to give into using the magic that her body, unused to having magical abilities during moments of such passion, was instinctively producing.

"Oh, is _that_ what I was doing, my daughter?" Cora stepped forward again, and Emma rose, placing her fingertips on Regina's lower back, willing more magic into her body, more energy born of love, to steady her.

"Was I busy destroying your happiness when you banished me to Wonderland? When you trapped me in that idiotic hellhole? Was I destroying your happiness, you insolent girl, when you stole your father's heart from me, only to kill him for your petty vengeance?"

Regina inhaled deeply, but said nothing. Cora's eyes glared while her mouth smiled, pressing on.

"Or is all this about that night, dearest? When I took dear _Daniel's_ heart? The stable boy? With whom you would have had _no_ future to speak of, no life worth remembering, no - "

"_I loved him!_" Regina yelped suddenly, stepping forward. Emma's eyes were wide, her fingers on the hilt of her sword.

"Oh, this again! Surely you must see how fickle love is, how permanent power is! I retained power, Regina, always. You banished me to Wonderland: I became the Queen of Hearts. You tried to have me killed: I won over your assassin and stole my way back to our land. I came to rule the only part of our land you didn't curse. And now I have arrived in Storybrooke, and - as you can see - " She gave a humorless laugh, gesturing at Snow and Charming - "I continue to exert my powers here. But _you_, you foolish girl? You _loved_ the stable boy, but don't you see, Regina? You now love _another - _don't act surprised, I know my daughter - this headstrong girl who has never amounted to anything, it seems - " she flicked her hand carelessly toward a file of newspaper clippings scattered upon Mr. Gold's desk - "but giving birth to my grandson behind bars and destroying the curse you worked so hard to create! Power is eternal, Regina: love is too weak to truly last, else your love for the stable boy wouldn't be so easily forgotten."

"You're wrong, Mother," Regina said, so softly that Emma almost didn't hear it over the roaring fear and anger raging through her ears. "I have never stopped loving Daniel, but I _have_ found a woman who respects that, who loves me despite everything I have done, everything I have been. You may have power, Mother, but you will never have anyone to share it with. You will always be alone. And I am sorry for you. But love never was my weakness, Mother: power was my weakness." She looked at Emma, thought of Henry, hoping against hope that the earnesty in the blonde's eyes would pull her through, would prove to her what she next found herself saying: "_Love is strength._ And because of that, I am stronger than you now. You won't defeat us."

She slipped her hand into Emma's as Cora laughed, like bells ringing in the midst of a thunderstorm.

"Oh but darling, I don't want to _defeat_ you. I want you to _join me_. I know you love me: you told me so when you thought I was dead. And that is why - especially with your newfound commitment to _love_ - that is why I know you are going to help me. To join me, so that you can have both power _and_ love. And all you have to do, Regina - all you need to do to be reunited with your mother - is one small, small thing."

Regina stood, frozen, staring at her mother, battling, Emma knew, the temptation to accept love from the woman who, despite everything, Regina had refused her entire life to hate.

Cora snapped her fingers. A young man appeared at their feet, hands bound behind his back, eyes widened with fear, gag tight around his mouth.

_Neal. _

Emma's heart would have leapt out of her chest if it were actually in there as she screamed his name and collapsed next to him, running her hands through his hair and gently across his face after trying in vain to loosen the magically-bound gag, tears in her eyes. She felt like she was drowning. "What are you - how did - how did you find him?" She demanded of Cora, the shock of seeing him again - and in such circumstances - forcing her rage at him out of her for the time being, tears welling in her eyes as Regina slowly intimated who this man was.

Cora smiled deeply. "Apparently this young man came to Storybrooke to find you, Ms. Swan." Her words were directed at Emma, but her eyes never left Regina's confused face, looking more and more as she had when she was a teenager by the moment. "He was asking everyone where he could find an Emma Swan, weaving quite a sad tale about how he'd done her wrong, needed to find her, to tell her the truth of why he left her all those years ago. When I told him that I could help him find you, the fool told me everything: how he'd been accosted by a young man - Geppeto's son, I believe - who told him about your _destiny_, Ms. Swan, how all of Storybrooke _needed_ you, that he had to let you go so that you could eventually come to break my daughter's curse. How he's never forgotten you, never stopped _loving _you. Wants to ask your hand in _marriage_. He even brought a diamond ring with him, didn't you, young man?" He glanced down at Neal as she nudged him with her toe.

Emma seemed to have stopped breathing, as Cora's words crashed over her and began to shatter what she had been made to believe about Henry's father for the past eleven years. She looked down at him, years of bitterness, grief, abandonment, and regret welling up in her eyes alongside something else: _was itlove?_

"Don't you see, Regina?" Cora continued, gluing her eyes to Regina's once again. "See how she coddles him? Tell me, daughter, has she ever held you like that? Have you even tried to form a life together? She had a life with _him_. She bore a son with _him_. What makes you think you can keep her heart now that he is back in her life and exonerated?"

Regina swayed on the spot, staring at Emma, reading the depth of her fear for Neal in her eyes. Seeing the familiar way that her hands caressed his face, his hair, knowing his body still after all these years.

"Take his heart, Regina. Take his heart to ensure that you will always have Emma's."


	7. She's Only Sleeping

Regina's conflicted eyes bore into Emma's fear-filled ones, desperation and insecurity flaring inside of her, overwhelming her senses.

"'Gina," Emma choked, tears staining her voice.

Regina's lip curled at the term of endearment, wondering what endearments Emma had had for the man she was rocking in her arms.

And then, unbidden, she saw behind her eyes Emma saving their son, so many times; kissing her inner thigh tenderly after making her cum, letting her guard slip even though they had had a strict separation between emotions and fucking; the look in the blonde's eyes as she touched her arm and made Jefferson's hat work, saving her for the upteenth time, like she had from the fire, from the chair Gold had tied her to, from the townspeople, from her father, from herself; the sincerity and desperation in her voice when she had asked, essentially, if Regina had room for her in her heart; the gentleness of her touch; the pain she had felt when she said goodbye for Daniel the second time, her own ability to genuinely love Emma and also revere the memory and strength of her old love for Daniel. Perhaps it was the same for the blonde?

In one swift, magical motion, the Queen wrenched Neal out of the sheriff's arms, Emma nearly collapsing forward with the sudden movement of his body. Whipped by her magic into a standing position, Neal trembled in his bonds, still gagged and unable to speak, mere inches from Regina, perfectly positioned to take his heart. She roughly sliced her hands through the air between them, and Emma watched, paralyzed on the floor - was it fear or trust that filled her eyes as she watched Regina? - as the bonds Cora had twisted tightly around him vanished.

Cora smiled widely in anticipation of Regina's plunging her hand into his chest. "_Yes_," she whispered.

Neal flinched as Regina tore her hands again through the space between them, and Cora's breath hitched in heady anticipation of the slaughter.

There was a puff of red smoke, and Neal was gone.

Regina stepped through the smoke towards Emma, still tear-stained on the floor, and helped her up, embracing her. "He's safe," Regina whispered, willing calmness into the blonde, who hugged her tightly in response.

"I know," Emma murmured, gratitude for and awe at this exquisitely strong woman coursing through her. _She really does love me_, she thought, realizing for perhaps the first time just how deeply the Queen had been transformed by their separation and subsequent mutual confession.

"I love you," they whispered simultaneously into each others' ear.

"_Wench!_"

Cora blasted the lovers apart, slamming Emma once again into the far wall and advancing on her steadily as Emma felt herself choking from the tightness of the bindings pressing her bones into the wall, Rumpel's various hangings threatening to pierce her back, protected by the moment by her leather jacket.

Cora' face contorted with rage as she advanced on Emma. "You are destroying my daughter," she fumed, as she plunged her hand roughly into Emma's chest. Her eyes widened in shock as she felt nothing where Emma's heart should have been. Despite the immense pain of having Cora's fist inside her chest, Emma smiled ruefully.

"You're the only thing that ever destroyed her," she said hoarsely. "Don't you see Cora?" she continued, nodding down at her chest. "Regina was right. Love _is_ strength."

Cora screamed in frustration as she wrenched her hand out of Emma's chest, withdrawing it into her dress and emerging with a small knife dripping with poison. She met Emma's widened eyes with a hateful grin and made to slash the knife down on the right side of Emma's top lip. Emma, bound to the wall and unable to move, merely squeezed her eyes shut and waited. She felt none of the sharp pain she anticipated, hearing instead a sudden rustling of clothing, rush of heels clacking on the floor, and felt Regina's hair in her face as she blocked Emma from Cora's rage. She opened her eyes in time to see Regina crumple at the floor in front of her.

"_No!_ Regina! _REGINA!_" she screamed uselessly. Cora sneered, furious at her daughter for being so foolish, focusing her eyes on the blonde malevolently as she dropped her from the wall and let her crawl desperately to gather her bleeding lover into her arms, stroking her face with more tenderness than she had ever summoned for Neal, desperately bringing the bottom of her tank top up to try and stem the blood flowing from Regina's cut.

"What did you _do_?" she shouted, her voice hoarse, and Snow, trembling in her own bonds, couldn't help but note the similarities between Emma's shouts and Regina's when they each held their bleeding lover in their arms. _Lover? No. Too much for one day, _Snow thought to herself inappropriately

"Oh, nothing to worry about, dear. She's only _sleeping_." Cora laughed humorlessly as a loud whoosh filled the room, and she vanished in a jet of black smoke.


	8. When True Love's Kiss Can't Work

The figure of Mr. Gold replaced Cora's as the magical smoke dissipated: he surveyed the room almost carelessly, seeming quite pleased with himself, one of his gloved hands carefully placed in his pocket.

Emma, Regina's limp form wrapped in her arms, vaguely registered the apparition as he surveyed the scene that Cora had been forced to leave: Snow, bound and gagged, lying next to the magically shielded David, still heavily under the Sleeping Curse, and the Queen laying unconscious in the Savior's arms, blood pouring out of the spot above her lip where she'd always sported a scar, Emma trembling, caressing Regina's face, willing magic to flow through her and staunch the blood flow, which - to her numb surprise and distinct relief - it did.

Rumpel waved an almost careless hand at Snow, releasing her from the bonds Cora had constricted her body and mouth with and - with vague irritation - tried in vain to raise the magical layer isolating David from the rest of the room. He turned his attention to Emma just as she murmured slowly to herself: "True Love's Kiss breaks any curse," quoting her son as she leaned down with anticipation, licking her lips lightly before pressing them against her love's...

"Oh, I wouldn't do that, Ms. Swan," he interrupted.

"You don't like it, Gold, no one's asking you to look," the blonde retorted without taking her eyes off of Regina.

"Actually - " he held up his hand and tightened his voice; something in his tone made her swallow in desperation and look up at him. " - distasteful as I find it that one as despicable as Regina be rescued by her _Twoo Wuv_, it's not the Queen I'm concerned about. It's your boy."

Emma blinked, her mind spinning as she absentmindedly shifted Regina's body to make sure the unconscious woman wasn't straining her neck muscles, her hands clamped protectively around her body.

"What the hell are you - "

"Well you see, Ms. Swan, if you kiss her," he began slowly, "not only will the little dearie awaken from her - ah - _nap_, but you will also break the curse that _I _have on the three of you. Which would leave young Henry's heart - "

"Vulnerable to Cora," Emma muttered in utter agony and defeat.

Rumpelstiltskin grimaced a smile, a solitary finger hovering in the air. "Now you understand."

"Then what are you suggesting, we just leave her here like this? Mary Margaret said that netherworld thing is awful, we can't just do nothing!" Her voice was thick with tears, but was steadying as she felt Regina's steady pulse, reminding herself that you can't die within a Sleeping Curse. She tried not to torture herself with thoughts of what Regina might be enduring.

_I shouldn't have shown any reaction to Neal. Fuck, why did I have to go all to pieces?_ Henry's voice slipped into her mind:_ Because good cares about everyone. Good always helps everyone._ Her own mind sighed. _Guess that includes scummy ex boyfriends: whatever their reasons for leaving were. _Her mind slipped back to the present. _Regina_, she groaned to herself.

"Actually Ms. Swan, we must do nothing, much as we must do nothing for your father."

Snow, who had cautiously approached Emma and put her hand on her back for support, objected. "But why can't you just lift the - "

"Because, my dear, I can do much with my magic, but not this. I only banished Cora from this shop - hence the smoke you saw, and her rather sudden disappearance - but I have not yet summoned what I need to defeat her. Cora is nonetheless actively maintaining her focus on keeping the shield 'round your Prince."

"And how do we break her focus?" Snow White demanded.

To their (slight) surprise, Gold smirked in response. "I didn't just banish her from this shop, you see. As she was leaving, I stepped into the same - magical conduit, if you will - as she had, heading in the opposite direction. As she was leaving, the Dark One was coming" - he was illustrating with his fingers as though explaining to a child - "and I marked her with this."

His gloved hand proudly retreated from his pocket, holding up a chained pendant. Emma recognized the markings as those that had been burnt onto Regina's hand.

"What is _with_ you and those - dementor things?"

"_Wraiths_," Snow whispered patiently.

Emma rolled her eyes. "Whatever! You can't bring a wraith thing to Storybrooke - Regina is still marked!" She tenderly swiped her fingertips across Regina's wrist, caressing the hand that she had felt her heart shatter upon seeing, bloodied and broken, as the woman stood, trying to hide her trembling, leaning against the jail cell bars. _She's not dying_. She took a deep breath, trying to clear her cloudy head, fogged with fear for the woman laying in her arms.

"Gold, I know you and Regina hate each other," she began, her voice thick with passion. "I get it. But if you don't care about her, care about what the last wraith you brought to Storybrooke did."

"And you are both home and fine and well, now aren't you, dearie?"

"Yeah, and we brought Regina's mother and your fucking crocodile hunter along with us!"

There was a tense silence in which Gold considered Emma's point.

"Wait," Emma began again. "Gold, Cora can't come back in here?"

"Not so long as I am maintaining the spell surrounding it: I had all I needed set in place before Cora's arrival, thinking I might need it one day for your _love_. And maintaining this spell is exactly that I intend to do until after the wraith has done its happy deed. Why do you ask?"

She eased her cell phone out of her pocket - somehow, it was still operational - and sent a quick text to Ruby.

"Because you're going to go get Henry, Ruby, and Belle and have them stay here as long as you're keeping Cora out of here."


	9. In Which Emma Carries Regina

To Snow's surprise, Gold simply stared at Emma, blinked, nodded slightly, and vanished in a swish of his suit jacket.

There was a somewhat awkward silence between mother and daughter as Emma continued to push Regina's hair out of her face tenderly and gaze at her with nothing but terrified adoration. Snow quietly, tentatively, reached out to wipe a slew of tears off of Emma's face. Emma jumped slightly, remembering her mother's presence. She looked up at her.

"You okay?" she asked Snow softly.

"Are _you_?" Snow returned, her eyebrows raised, in mother mode.

Emma nodded, staring at Regina again. "We need to get her comfortable before Henry gets here. I don't want him to see her all..." Her voice faltered. "... on the floor like this."

Snow nodded quietly, watching Emma carefully as she slid her lap out from under Regina's head and shoulders, supporting her head with her hands as she squatted next to her. Snow moved to help her lift Regina, but Emma ignored her, sliding her hands under Regina's ass and securely slipping her other arm firmly under the brunette's upper back. Snow blinked, mouth open slightly as she watched her daughter, seemingly effortlessly, lift the woman who'd vowed to destroy everyone's happiness right off the floor, carrying her limp form to a clear counter next to David, rising up onto her tiptoes to lay her down gently, sliding off her leather jacket, rolling it up, and placing it under her head.

Snow shook her head slightly as her eyes widened. She glanced at David. _Certainly not the love we had in mind for our daughter_, she thought ruefully. She sighed as she heard the whooshing sound that announced Gold's arrival.

"Mom!" Henry shouted, running over to Emma and Regina as Snow hugged Ruby. She took him firmly into her arms. "What happened?" he said in a strangled voice as he stood on his tiptoes to look at Regina's sleeping face. "Cora put her under a Sleeping Curse, kid. She - she saved me from it." She swallowed hard. "Just like you did," she whispered.

"Why don't you just kiss her?" he asked, Henry's earnesty warming her heart.

"I can't, kid. I kiss your mom, the curse protecting your heart breaks. She wouldn't want me to do that. Your mom's tough, Henry. She'll be fine in there," she explained, sounding more confident than she felt.

"So... what do we do?"

"I don't know, kid. But we're gonna figure it out. Promise."


	10. Henry & Emma Embark on a Quest

***trigger warning* for threat of knife violence and a wee bit of blood.**

* * *

Mother and son both jumped as the sound of arguing filled the shop behind them.

"You can't _do _this. This is someone's _soul_, Rumpelstiltskin. I know you can't remember who I am, but you need to listen to me. Your son would want you to listen to me."

In a flash, the Dark One's knife was at her neck and Snow had to hold Ruby back to keep her from springing on Rumpelstiltskin as Emma cupped her hand in front of Henry's eyes, pulling him protectively into her midsection.

"How do you know of my son? What have you heard of him?" he asked roughly, shaking Belle as he spit his words at her.

"Only what you've told me," Belle answered steadily, firmly, as a tiny drop of blood streaked down from the contact between knife and flesh. "That you love him but you pushed him away, and you've been trying to find a way back to him ever since."

Emma stepped forward quietly. "Gold, god knows we have our differences, but I have never lied to you. And look at me," she implored, her voice dripping with passion. "I'm not lying now, either. You did some sort of spell to make yourself forget this woman so you could protect her from Cora. She's telling the truth."

"Like the potion you gave me to forget Charming, except you meant this to be reversible," Snow contributed.

Rumpelstiltskin looked down at Henry, whose eyes, now unprotected by Emma, were wide with earnesty and fear. He looked back at Belle, whose eyes were set in steely determination. _We had a deal! You coward!_ Hatred for what he was flooded the wizard.

He lowered his knife.

"What would you have me do, then?" he spat at his former lover. "Let Cora run amok and destroy all of Storybrooke?"

Henry stepped forward and tugged on Mr. Gold's sleeve. Rumpel's eyes widened at the gesture, not having been touched by any child since he held Henry as a three-week old infant, and his mother before that.

"You told me in your bedtime story that the ink Emma and Mary Margaret needed to stop Cora is also at the bottom of the ocean, with a squid or something. Can't you get it? And then we can stop Cora without sucking out her soul."

Emma beamed, but looked at Gold, bemused.

"You told my kid a bedtime story?"

"Desperate times, Ms. Swan. But really now, dearie, there are more important questions at hand, much like the one your boy is asking. And while I'd like nothing better than to watch Cora's soul being ripped from her body, it seems I am outnumbered, and you and Henry are enemies that I do not wish to have right now, Ms. Swan. So yes, Henry, you remember correctly. I have but one correction: my role at the moment is to stay in Storybrooke and keep Cora at bay, not galavanting off to face old foes under the sea." He shifted his gaze back to Emma. "That, I believe, is where you come in... Saviour."

Emma blinked, wondering if this was going to be her role now... forever. "Two problems, Gold. One, _this_ ocean? I thought only Storybrooke was affected by the curse? Two, Henry said _bottom_ of the ocean. Bottom. Of the ocean. Really? Just how do you expect me to get this magical ink from, you know... there?"

"You swim." Snow White slid off of the stool on which she'd sank after a fashion, gazing at David, holding Red's hand, which was resting on her shoulder. The entire room, save for Gold, looked at her as though Cora's magic had unhinged her brain. She shrugged. "Lancelot knew the knights who slayed the beast of Lach Ness. He told me that they were dealt a potion from an evil sorcerer that helped them breathe and communicate under water for hours and hours on end."

"And let me guess," Emma began, "_you_ were that evil sorcerer?"

Rumpelstiltskin bowed elaborately, arms waving out behind him, and Snow was struck by how eerie it was to see this gesture played out by a man in a suit, in a distinctly non-magical-appearing (unless you know what you were looking for) pawn shop.

"And I take it you have this potion?"

"Oh yes," he breathed, sounding more like Rumpelstiltskin and less like Gold: Snow shivered slightly and Belle swallowed hard.

"Your price?" Emma deadpanned.

"I'll give you enough potion for two. Take your boy with you."

"Absolutely not!", "No way!", "Are you out of your mind?", "Rumpelstiltskin, no!", and "Yes, please!" exploded from five mouths at once.

Rumpelstiltskin bounced on his toes and twinkled his fingers in dancing glee at the havoc he was wreaking.

"Those are my terms, Ms. Swan. I only ask that you remember one thing is considering my offer: I am fairly accomplished at prophecy - certainly your mother can attest to that - and I am telling you that your boy will prove vital in this task. And anyway, Ms. Swan, would you not feel more focused on your task were your boy at your side rather than up here with Cora?"

Wanting to give her friend time to consider, Ruby asked, "Hold on, Gold, you never answered Emma's questions. Wasn't Storybrooke the only place affected by the curse?"

Hatred flashed in Rumpelstiltskin's eyes as he regarded Red, though he couldn't quite remember why. He only knew that her physical affection towards Belle enraged him, as Ruby had taken the bleeding woman into her arms after Rumpel released her and silently, gently tended the incision he'd sliced into her neck, kissing the wound after she stemmed the blood flow.

"Portals are powerful, dearie. Cora and Hook opened one into this realm by means of water, and water itself is a powerful medium. The underland of our realm is there. I can feel it."

"And what can we expect to find down there?"

"Oho, no, dearie: information isn't part of our deal."

Emma seethed but said nothing.

"You up for this, kid?"

"I was born for this, Emma."

* * *

Emma had desperately tried to keep goodbyes short, her need to get to the docks and get this over with growing by the minute. With a squeeze of Regina's sleeping, cursed hand and a brief hug for her mother, she swept out of Gold's shop, Henry in tow.

It was with immense agitation, therefore, that upon leaving the shop, she almost walked flat into the one person whom she'd never had the chance to say goodbye to, but had spent over a decade wanting to slug.

Neal.

* * *

_Next chapter will take a gander at Regina and David in the netherworld of sleeping curses: the chapter after that will get back to Emma reuniting with Neal (when he's, you know, no longer tied up)._


	11. Regina & David Together in Hell

***trigger warning* for violent images**

He tumbled forward, overbalancing from the shock of his hallucinatory opponent disappearing as his equally hallucinatory sword left his hands and his mind. The agony of realizing where he was trapped; remembering the pain of the burns that by now had diseased his body; the utter despair of his wife as she was forced, by waking, out of his own personal hell; overwhelmed him, as he let his body lay slack on the iron-hot floor, scorching his soul through the melting of his skin. "Snow..." he groaned, feeling another hallucination beginning, knowing too well what came with this one: a re-imagining of the last battle he'd fought in his home, this time featuring his sword slipping and allowing his baby to be taken by the Queen's guards as the curse overcame the land, its cries of pain matched only by the writhing agony in his heart and in Snow's sobs.

"David?" He vaguely heard a voice, deeply sensual and full of - what? - regret, fear, and the edge, perhaps, of panic. Disgust? Compassion?

"David!" He heard it again, cutting through the dying screams of his lover and their new-born, slicing through his tears just like that laughter, that laughter that his dead body had somehow still registered as the Queen enacted the curse, yet again, in his contorted hallucination. His heart surged with hatred as he recognized the voice.

"_You!_" he growled, forcing his blistered and bleeding hands and face off of the sizzlingly hot floor. He rushed at Regina, newly arrived and as yet unburnt, leaping through an uprising of flames in an attempt to throttle the woman who had put a price on his love's head. Who had torn away everything anyone had ever cared about. Who had caused all this pain to begin with. Who had forced his beloved to endure this hell, not to mention tried to put his daughter through it, carelessly thrusting it upon his grandson.

Regina merely stood there, her face still but her eyes set with pain, as David rushed at her. Stiff with the shock of being cursed, shock at David's mottled appearance, the older woman merely blinked, making no move to defend herself, the voice of the daughter of the man running at her, hands aimed for her throat - _everyone always goes for the throat_, she noted dryly - still ringing in her ears in panic: "_No! Regina! REGINA!_"

It mattered not that the dethroned queen was too numb to try to defend herself or move out of the way; the hallucinating man ran through her as though she weren't real - was she? - as his momentum took him careening across the room, a frustrated yell ripping his throat. She turned and watched him breathe as he moved back to face her, rage contorting his features, already distorted by flames.

"You destroyed _EVERYTHING!_" he growled, unconsciously using his wife's inflections. Despite this, Regina was anguished at his burns, his fear, his pain. She took a calm step toward him, forcing herself to try to see his daughter in his eyes: her fire, her determination, her anger, her boldness, her defiance. She tried not to think about the fact that she got just as many - if not more - of those qualities from her mother as from her father.

"Yes, I did," she said evenly, but not unkindly. "But that was in another life, David. I became everything I never wanted to be: no more." She paused, searching his face. He was frozen, gazing at her as though from a distance, as though he were straining to hear her. And he probably was: sleeping curse victims were unaccustomed, after a time, to interacting with anyone but the worst incarnations of their worst regrets: with themselves. She saw Emma reflect in his deep eyes, and vaguely contemplated how strongly family characteristics were shared in the body of the product of True Love, and in her son. She forced herself to press on, to try to get through to him.

"I became my mother, David, and for that I have paid a heavy price." She considered. "And so has everyone else. But only days ago, David, you trusted me to take care of your grandson, to keep him safe while you weren't able to. And now your wife and your daughter are back in Storybrooke because I saved them. But they're back in danger, David, and we need to keep ourselves safe in here. For them."

He shook his head and blinked as though coming up for air from a lake, his brow furrowed. Regina was beginning to feel the pull of the panic of the room they were in, but fought it, pleased to see that David was doing the same.

"But we're in a sleeping curse. We can't die in here."

"No, we can't." She shuddered as she glanced around, wrapping her arms around herself. "But a sleeping curse is worse than death, in many ways: you've been experiencing that. We need to - "

"Wait. Why are you here? And how - how will you be - your True Love..."

Regina thought quickly, her eyes searching David's face. She had been satisfied a moment ago with David's concentration, but now perhaps he was a little too focused: now might not be the best time to tell him that his wife had helped kill her first True Love, but that his daughter was her new True Love, who would kiss her to wake her, to save her (again). She decided to evade his second question at present.

"My mother," she said simply, gesturing almost carelessly at the trickle of blood above her lip. "A crude but effective method - through blood, as we did with you."

"Your _mother's_ in Storybrooke? Snow and Emma didn't stop her?"

"They delayed her plans to come, but no, they did not stop her. I'm simply impressed that they managed to return safely at all. In any event, Cora has arrived in Storybrooke and we need to - to..."

David nodded encouragement for her to keep talking, again as though through a thick haze. A jet of flames took like between them, and Regina fell to her knees.

Talking about Cora had been a mistake: perhaps the "I'm in love with your daughter" conversation would have been a better choice. Casting her thoughts towards her mother - who convinced her that love is weakness - rather than filling her mind with the woman who was busying herself with proving that love is strength had tossed her soul into a deeply vulnerable space, forcing her to succumb to the power of the curse.

Laying lifeless in her arms was Daniel, as she tried and failed to kiss him back to life, in agony looking up to where David stood and demanding of him - for she saw Cora instead - "why have you done this?" When she turned her gaze back to the heartless corpse in her arms, pure despair and rage coursing through her being, she saw not Daniel's closed eyes, but Emma's the woman's body now in her arms instead, a bloodied hole in her chest where her heart should have been.

And Regina screamed as she never had in her life, her entire being convulsing uncontrollably as she tried and failed - for the body in her arms was not real - to breathe life back into the lifeless woman, whose limbs were fast becoming shorter, whose hair was disappearing and becoming darker, clothing transforming from tank top and jeans to jeans and a small dark coat with a scarf, as Emma's corpse became Henry's. Regina's renewed scream nearly made her throat bleed as her body wracked with loud sobs, kicking her feet into the blistering hot ground. Tears bled from her face and sprouted new jets of flames from where they landed on the floor. She made no attempt to withdraw from the burning essence as she rocked back and forth in agony, her mother's detached explanation that this was best for her ringing in her ears.

From a distance, she heard a deep voice calling her name. "Daniel?" Her voice cracked, still cradling her imagining of her son's body.

Like a whip, her body was forced to straighten and stand as the next hallucination took hold. She cried out helplessly as she heard the thud of Henry's dead body hit the floor, heard the unearthly sizzle and smelt the gut-churning scent of burning brown hair and formerly beautiful flesh as very real flames took over the imaginary body. A new one arose from its ashes and suddenly she felt blood pooling over her. She looked into the wide eyes of her father, dying at her hand as life left them forever. But suddenly those eyes belonged not to an old man, but to a young boy, as one Henry transformed into another, the enlivened eyes of her son dying, being murdered, by her hand, unable - or unwilling? - to stop it.

Again a deep voice shouted her name - "Regina! _REGINA!_" - but it was lost on her as she was consumed only by her own despair, by a desperate desire to erase her own existence, as she watched Emma and Henry playing together from a distance, clearly happier without her. Oddly, the image, meant to torture her, steadied her somewhat, seeing them alive and well - if disconnected from her - rather than dead in her arms, at her hand.

She collapsed onto the burning ground, caring not for what the fire was doing to her body. Let it consume her: Emma would take care of Henry. Then that voice again.

"Regina." Closer now, full of concern. She forced herself to turn her head, to open her eyes. David was squatting by her side, his wounds from the fire healed.

"How - ?" she croaked, her head foggy with pain and her voice broken from her own agonized screams.

"When I saw you hallucinating, I truly remembered where we are. This place is designed to torture us, but except for an accident, it didn't hurt Henry when he knew it was safe, and it didn't hurt me when Snow was here."

Regina nodded, eyes closed, slowly sitting up, trying desperately to regulate her breathing and control her uncontrollably spasming limbs.

Her voice shook violently, but she forced speech past her singed lips anyway. "That's what I was trying to tell you before I..." She shuddered. "I wanted to calm you down, to tell you that we can find a way out of this room."

He nodded, smiling slightly as he watched the burn marks slowly leaving her perfect face, as she forced herself to remember that this room was meant to cause such pain, but if they were aware of it, they could fight it.

Regina rose, shakily but with renewed determination. She glanced around with foreboding at the flames, the immense claustrophobia of the room, but with an increasing sense of resolution. That vision of Henry and Emma happy without her? To the contrary. She knew they were fighting for her. They wanted to be happy _with_ her. And even if they didn't _they_ were happy. Alive. Maybe that was enough. She took a deep breath and gagged slightly as smoke filled her nostrils and attacked her mouth with the wretched taste of her own agony.

"There are three ingredients vital to every good sleeping curse. Smoke from the fire that burns the corpse of a murdered fairy - that seems to account for this room; blood of a soulless victim of a wraith - that was very nearly me, I suppose...; and the blood of a phoenix, smeared into its ashes." David made a face. "As I was telling Henry, curses aren't meant to be pleasant, David." She almost smirked. Almost. "I would imagine that each of these ingredients, which - I imagine - each correspond to a different room. A different layer of hell, if you will. And given what Gold said about your needing to find this room, I imagine it is both possible and necessary for us to find these other rooms."

"But... why?" She noted how similar to Emma he looked when he was confused, and though terrified and still reeling from what she'd experienced, she found herself suppressing a smile.

"As you've undoubtedly noticed, the effects of this room are cumulative. Without constant, hopeful stimulation, the... _images_... increase with time. Unless you care to continue hallucinating the demise of dear Snow?" she quipped, but he somehow sensed her - was it affection? - in the tease. She continued, "There is legend of a woman who escaped the sleeping curse without the benefit of True Love's Kiss. Upon waking, she told tales of having defeated three layers of the curse. I suspect one of them was this room. And the sooner we can find a way out of here before we're awoken by those on the outside, the sooner we can help: Cora is with them, David, and even if I can be woken, she has your body encased in a spell that is impenetrable to Snow - you cannot be reached to be kissed so long as Cora maintains that spell."

"And how exactly do we go about finding these other... layers?"

"We look," Regina deadpanned, amused but encouraged by his eagerness to venture deeper into hell, a truce born of compassion for each others' pain sprung between them. She set off into a jet of flames to explore, and called over her shoulder, "Come along, Charming," spurred by the secret knowledge that the legendary woman who escaped years ago had also been steadied by a love of women. "You have to return to your wife, and I - " she turned her head and looked steadily at him, waiting for a plume of flames to die down before she continued, so she could fully see the effects of her next words - "your daughter."

She smirked as his jaw dropped and wished she could photograph his shock for Emma. Since they produced magic by touch now, they could probably share memories magically, she realized gleefully; better than a photograph by far. Her smile deepened as she recalled Mary Margaret's face when she learned about the Evil Queen and her daughter. She wondered if the "perfect couple" would have to go to Archie together to learn how to cope with the idea of their sainted Savior daughter with the wicked Evil (and very much woman) Queen. She laughed, a full laugh that blossomed from the clarity with which she imagined Emma's amusement if she could only see the look on her father's face.

As the sound of her laughter rang out, the floor rumbled underneath them both, crackling open like a tree split by lightning: her delight having defeated this one, they were falling through to the next level of hell.


	12. Emma's Done with Neal

"Emma!" Neal had been pacing, rubbing his wrists where Cora's bindings had cut in, clearly waiting for Emma to emerge.

"Henry, wait inside," Emma murmured urgently, but the precocious boy stepped forward, pushing past his mother's hands.

"Who are you? Why are you in Storybrooke? How did you get here?"

Neal gazed at Henry for a long moment, looking slowly back up to Emma. "Emma, is this your..." His eyes shifted to Henry. "How old are you?"

"I'm ten, and you didn't answer any of my questions."

The color drained out of both Emma and Neal's faces as their eyes met above Henry's head.

"Henry, please, wait inside."

"No! We need to go to the docks, together. But first, who is this guy, Emma?"

The blonde took a deep, steadying breath, kneeling in front of him, putting her hands on his shoulders. "Henry, I... when I told you about your father, I didn't... Henry... "

"He's my dad, isn't he?" Henry deadpanned.

"Yeah," Emma whispered in a clipped tone, so softly that neither heard her, but they both knew what she said.

"You lied to me," Henry whispered, wrenching out of Emma's grasp before running back towards Gold's shop.

"No, Henry, wait! _Kid_!"

Henry stopped without turning around. "I'll explain on our way to the dock. I promise. Just please. Wait." It was mortifying enough, Neal turning up out of nowhere and her past being paraded in front of Regina, Snow, and now, Henry. She didn't need everyone to watch how it affected Henry, too.

Her son rotated on the spot and fixed Emma with a very Regina-esque stare, awaiting further explanation.

Emma swallowed hard and turned back to Neal.

"Well, I've always imagined seeing you again featuring me punching you in the face. Many times. Lucky for you, I won't do that in front of my kid."

"Our kid?" Neal asked softly, a strange look in his eyes. Emma paused for a long moment, considering.

"Your sperm," she whispered.

Neal just breathed for a moment, tears in his eyes. "Emma, I never knew - "

"Oh, because it would have been so different if you had." Sarcasm dripped from her voice as she heard Mary Margaret in the back of her mind. _Emma, that wall of yours_...

"Emma, you don't understand. None of it was what you thought. A man, August, he showed me - he told me - she showed me the truth about what you are, your destiny, in his briefcase thing..."

"_August_? _Brief_case? What the hell are you - "

"Yes. There was - "

"It was a _typewriter_, Neal!"

"No. You saw what you wanted to see, Em. You didn't see all your potential, yourself as a hero, didn't see your future, your past, like I did, in that box. But I always saw everything in you, Ems, and I never - "

Emma held up her hands, suddenly feeling seventeen again. "Okay okay okay. Enough. I get the picture. So August told you - what? - to abandon me and leave me pregnant in a fucking detention facility?" She wrapped her arms protectively around herself and reached for Henry. He was still staring wide-eyed at Neal, but he melted into her touch, putting together that Neal - whatever the reasons - had abandoned her before he was born. Emma took Neal's silence as assent.

"Listen, Neal, I know it's - it's wild, but I believe you. Kinda hard not to believe after all I've been through the last few weeks. Killed a dragon, brought my kid back to life, broke a curse, faced an ogre, climbed a beanstalk, fought a bunch of zombies, knocked out Regina's mom, jumped into a portal that was about to explode... I believe you, Neal. And I just about hate you, but that doesn't mean I don't care for you. I'm not sorry that Regina saved your life. It makes me love her even more." Henry touched her arm with his hand and she was so grateful for his faith in her, despite her lies to him.

Neal opened his mouth to speak, but Emma cut him off.

"Uh uh, you don't get to do this. You don't get to roll into town and - Cora said you wanted to _propose_? - Neal, I don't know even who you are anymore! We haven't seen each other in eleven years! This isn't some fairy tale - " Henry looked up at her and made a face. Emma shrugged at him and plowed on. " - where people just get married because after five seconds of knowing each other, they decide they should! I loved you once, but however _honorable_ the reason, you left a long time ago, and we've been done a long time. I moved on, and you really have to do the same. I'm in love with the woman who just saved your life, Henry is our son, and none of that is ever going to change. You may have helped me conceive him, but he was in _my_ body for nine months, _he_ came to find _me_, _we've_ formed a family now. So thank you, it was really nice, but knowing your reasons for abandoning me just doesn't change the last ten years of my life. Or of my kid's. I'm grateful for everything, and I'm really glad you're safe - I hated seeing you at risk like that - but you _are _safe now, and it's over between us, Neal. I won't have my life be defined by any man anymore. If Henry wants to get to know you, he's his own person and that's his choice, but our relationship is done. It has been for a long time. Now I'm sorry, Neal, but we really have to go. His mom needs us. You should... stay inside somewhere. Cora's dangerous."

She looked down at Henry. He nodded silently, eyes fixed on Neal. He started to walk, silently, towards his old castle, towards the water. Emma followed him, not looking back at Neal, who was standing in stunned silence, hand buried deep in his pocket, clutching the box that held a diamond ring he had been saving for the woman who was walking away from him.

Out of nowhere - the very place he tended to come from - August W. Booth stepped into Neal's space, touched his shoulder, and motioned for him to follow. After a few moments during which his legs didn't work, the brokenhearted man followed the formerly wooden boy to Granny's, where Pinocchio figured that the former lover of the Savior would be safe, out of the way of Cora's rage.

* * *

Henry stalked ahead of Emma until they were nearly at the dock's. His anger tended to combine her need to be alone, Regina's fury, and his own acutely childish sense of being betrayed: Emma knew this and kept her distance until he was ready. He stopped when they were in sight of the ground where his old castle had been: he stepped onto the dock closest to it - where Hook's ship was bouncing on mild waves, anchored - and waited for her to catch up to him.

"Henry, I am so sorry I lied to you," she began.

"Did you make it all up on the spot? About him being a fire fighter? About pumpkin pie? Or did you have it planned in your head?" he asked. He had been crying, she saw, and it broke her heart as she knelt in front of him.

She took a deep breath. "I didn't make any of it up, Henry. All of that happened to me. To someone I... knew. That someone just wasn't your father. I'm sorry, kid. I'm sorry I lied to you, I'm sorry I - "

"I think I understand," he cut her off, looking at her intently.

"You do?" Emma said, her hands on his shoulders, eyebrows almost disappearing into her blonde mane.

"You wanted me to believe in good. That I came from good."

"That's right, I did," Emma murmured, always amazed by her son's easy insights. "I shouldn't have lied to you, Henry, but I didn't... I didn't want you to think less of me, less of yourself, because your father abandoned me."

He regarded her thoughtfully, and not for the first time, Emma wondered how old he was when he was born. "Why did you say I could get to know him, if I wanted?"

Emma sighed. "All my life, people have been making decisions for me because they thought it was best for me. Your grandparents sent me away because they thought it would be better for me to grow up alone than to grow up together under the curse. Now I found out that Neal... Neal betrayed me because he wanted me to fulfill my... _destiny, _or whatever... I won't make a decision for you because it's what _I _think you should want. I trust you, Henry, and I want you to be in charge of your own life." She considered. "Your mom will probably kill me for this, but we'll deal with that once she's safe."

Henry smiled at her quip about Regina. "You and Mom are my parents," he said simply, plopping down next to Emma and taking his sneakers off. "I guess it would be cool to have more than two parents, but I don't need that. I happy having just you and Mom. Now let's go get what we need to stop Cora and wake Mom up."

Emma's smile was radiant as she scooped Henry into a hug. She pulled off her boots and sighed, looking down at the water. She took Gold's potion out of her jeans pocket, sticking her tongue out at Henry before downing half. She offered him the rest, which he swallowed and wrinkled his nose.

"Too salty," he said. Emma smiled. _Only Regina's child would think something could be _too_salty._

"Well, where we're goin', you better get used to it, kid. You ready for this?"

"I was born for this."

With that, mother and son held hands, walked to the edge of the dock next to Hook's ship, and jumped. The entire ocean tingled subtly as they hit water and their skin prickled with cold. They swam down, hoping Gold's potion would be all it was cracked up to be.


	13. Aurora & Mulan Search for Philip

They collapsed in two unceremonious heaps in the dead end of a deserted corridor. The moment they had both ascertained that no bones were broken - how could they be? both of their bodies were laying in Gold's office - David rose, advancing on Regina.

"What do you mean, you have my _daughter_ to return to?" he demanded.

Regina looked away from him, the better to hide her smirk. "David, really now, of all the questions that could have occurred to you at this particular moment, _that_ is the one you choose to ask?"

He opened his mouth to retort, every bit the archetypical defensive father. Whatever response he was stumbling through in his mind was cut off by a high-pitched scream emerging from a minute point of light, flickering as tiny and significant as a candle, at the far end of the blackened, marble-floored corridor.

The odd partners exchanged a glance: both had apparently heard the scream. If it were a hallucination, it certainly wasn't your garden-variety apparition. By unspoken agreement to discuss the state of Regina's relationship with the princess at a later time, they silently sprinted toward the sound.

* * *

"Who's there?!" Charming shouted as the point of light became big enough to step through, both Prince and Queen ducking as they barreled through a low-hanging, majestically-designed wooden doorway.

"Come no closer!" a commanding voice shouted from within the room, which was supremely dark. The light, it seemed, emanated from the doorway itself, not penetrating into the room it offered entrance into.

Regina's tense body slammed into David's rigid form. Both parties grunted at the contact, Regina desperately trying not to be reminded of his daughter's strong legs as Charming's remained planted, refusing to be pushed forward by the weight of Regina's impact.

"Who goes there? Make yourself known to me!" David shouted into the darkness. Regina rolled her eyes behind his back: she had her own flair for fairy tale royalty-speak, but she seriously doubted she made herself sound quite so ridiculous when she spoke that way. She felt him reach for a sword that wasn't in his belt. She shook her head, eyes closed: dating their daughter or not - _dating?!_ - she supposed the Charmings would always find ways to irk her.

A sensuous voice reached them, the same that had bade them to stay put: "You are in no position to make demands! You are standing on a precipice - take one more step, and you will drop to your death. Now - " David and Regina heard a sword being drawn - "Tell me who you are! Who sent you into this realm?"

David paused, considering, glancing at Regina's face behind him. Though he could feel her breath on his neck, he couldn't see her: the darkness was too penetrating. He willed her silently to keep quiet. "I am Prince Charming, husband of Snow White. I have been placed under a Sleeping Curse, along with my... valet." He nudged Regina in the ribs as he heard her begin to object. Suddenly she realized: if it was anyone from their realm, which the faithful prince was undoubtedly hoping it was, it might not be best if the woman who had frozen their lives for 28 years wasn't revealed as such, at least not immediately.

They heard another voice - higher pitched, less combative - pipe in, "Snow's husband?" They heard rushed, tense whispering. "Prove to us that you are he," the voice continued, trying only slightly too hard to sound impressive, worthy of her title as a princess. "If you are who you say you are, tell me the name of the woman who helped your wife get home to Storybrooke!"

"Aurora," David said into nothingness. "Her name was Aurora."

After a brief silence, a gloved hand sent a hovering flare into the space between the two pairs of scared bodies. Blinking in the sudden brightness, they looked upon each others' faces.

"I am Aurora," the higher-voiced woman informed them, looking curiously at David's illuminated face. "This is Mulan, my protector." The dark haired woman nodded solemnly, the sword back in its sheath, her hand still resting on the hilt.

"And your valet is a... woman," Sleeping Beauty observed with finality, shifting her gaze to Regina, taking in the Queen's curves with wide-eyed appreciation.

"As is your soldier," Regina deadpanned.

There was a somewhat tense silence as all parties looked around the room. David's eyes flew open when he realized that Mulan's entreaty for them to step no closer had been truly been a warning against severe damage: his toes were barely on secure ground. The room they had entered was massive, circular, and appeared to be entirely constructed of seamless black marble, which abruptly stopped two or so feet from the walls, leaving a seemingly endless spiral - like a whirlpool, a black hole, made of marble, forever frozen in downward descent - making up most of the room's center. He shifted to Regina's side so that his back was flush against the wall, rather than precariously balanced at the precipice.

"How did you get here? And... you know... where exactly is here?" he asked.

"I was under a Sleeping Curse: that's how I communicated with Henry," Aurora began. "Cora - " Regina flinched inwardly - "told me while I was in captivity that there is a way to rescue my Philip. Mulan and I embarked on a quest to discover the realm that souls consumed by wraiths get sent to. This..." she looked around her grimly, "is apparently that realm. We consulted with an old sorcerer who gave Mulan the ability to come with me. I went back under the curse, as Snow did when she talked to you, by inhaling the essence of poppy seeds. And... here we are." She shrugged, palms outward, her eyes bright with the hope of rescuing the man who used to be her lover.

"We haven't been able to determine if we're even in the right place yet," Mulan added. "We haven't encountered any lost souls..."

"Except mine. But you found that," Aurora whispered to her companion. Regina's lips turned upwards slightly as she looked down into the abyss. She felt rather than saw the blush creep into Mulan's cheeks.

Regina paled, realizing something. "I think we're about to." She held up her scarred hand silently: her flesh had mostly healed, but the imprint of the wraith's mark upon her remained.

"You've lost your soul? Then how are you - " Mulan demanded urgently.

"No," Regina said softly. "Emma, she... she saved me. That's how she wound up in the enchanted forest to begin with."

David noted silently the reverence with which the Queen had uttered his daughter's name. Mulan, however, drew her sword, shuffling forward as best she could while scuttling against the wall, so as to not fall into the pit that was most of the room. "Then it was _you_! The wraith that was meant for _you_ was what drew Philip's soul out of him!"

Aurora's mouth flew open as she stared at Regina, conflicted. "Mulan, no," she said, touching her arm. Mulan brushed her off.

"I didn't know anyone was left in our land! I thought the wraith would only encounter nothingness! I didn't know!" Regina said, tearing her throat with earnesty, apologizing for so much more than a miscalculation. Mulan blinked, remembering how Emma had murmured Regina's name in sleep, and wondering about the sincerity in the woman's voice.

Whatever response Mulan had was suspended by a blinding light emerging from the vortex that formed the room's center. A moaning - how could light _moan_? - emitted eerily from the spiral. Regina's breath hitched as it had when she watched the wraith rip the bars off of her jail cell. This time, the being that was emerging had no form - _how could it? who could fathom what shapes souls take?_ - but they could feel its presence and see its amorphous gleam.

Being after being began to emerge from the vortex, imposing in the power of their presence: like you are being watched - stalked - but multiplied by millions, on a cold, dark, defenselessly lonely night. Souls that hadn't experienced the miraculous sensations of human flesh, some in years, some - like Philip's soul - in mere weeks, swarmed from the depths of the bottomless room into the chamber that the four travelers occupied. All turned their formless faces to Regina: the marked one, the one whose soul should be one with theirs, but for her saving grace, her hero, her protector. Her Emma.

But Emma wasn't here to save her. Nor was Henry.

"Philip!" Aurora shouted, holding up the pouch that Mulan had given her, containing the ornament that had marked and condemned him. "Philip, it's Aurora! You saved me, and now it is my time to save you!"

The moaning, which had been growing louder, the closer the souls drew to Regina, dulled down to a distant, eerie humming. It seemed that souls in this realm were not used to being recognized by their formerly human designations. They drew instead now towards Aurora, as though curious. _Hopeful_?

Mulan brandished her sword, chin raised defiantly. "We seek to rescue the soul of Prince Philip! We have been told that one's soul, if presented with a body that is full of True Love for the person that soul once was, can be magicked back into the living realm. Aurora is prepared to bring you back to our realm, Philip!"

Regina - terrified though she was, even now that the souls had stopped paying attention to her - detected strong heartbreak in Mulan's words, though her stance was set and her voice steady. She stared for a long moment at Aurora, whose eyes were brimming with tears of anticipation. _And dread?_

Aurora nodded steadily. One being disengaged from the others and swooped forward lightly, hovering in front of Aurora. "Philip?" she whispered, her voice trembling.

David and Regina watched in wonder as the soul slipped into Aurora, enveloping her entire body rather than entering through a single point. Mulan looked on in silent heartbreak. _We were never meant to be_.

After several moments of silence, in which Aurora's body glowed ethereally - _success?_ - she trembled violently, wretching into the darkness, down, down into the vortex of a room, Mulan holding her by the waist so that she did not fall forward with the force of her sudden illness.

An unearthly scream emerged from a mouth that was not Aurora's. David jumped involuntarily, and Regina grabbed his upper arm to stop him from falling. She let go as soon as possible.

"I'm sorry, Philip," they heard Aurora gasp as the soul that had entered her left, whisking down quickly into the bottom depths of the room, accompanied by the other whisps of past lives.

"What happened?" Mulan asked urgently, offering a handkerchief to Aurora, who was still shaking terribly.

"It was Philip," Aurora gasped between tears. "He told me he loves me. I told him that... I told him I love him too, but he said that my body was burning... burning his soul. He said that I need to carry on... with..." She raised her eyes to meet Mulan's painfully, as Regina's eyes swam with dizzyingly agonized tears, remembering Daniel. "With you. I told him I would never abandon him, and neither would you. He said he would rather have me carry on with none but you, Mulan. That his sacrifice was a small price to pay for both of our happiness." Mulan watched her, slack-jawed. Regina smiled a small smile through her tears, thinking of Emma as David scratched his head.

Aurora and Mulan's bodies suddenly flickered in and out of existence. They exchanged worried glances. "We're waking up," Mulan said tensely, her arm still around Aurora's waist. She flipped over her sword casually, tossing it to Regina, who caught it deftly, hilt-first.

"I know who you are. Queen Regina. Go aid your princess as I have aided mine. You'll need that sword. It deflects your mother's magic, and it might help you get out of here, as well." She turned to David. "Good luck, Prince Charming." She smiled, and Aurora almost swooned at how handsome her smile was.

"Tell Snow and Emma thank you," Aurora called as she and her soldier disappeared, holding hands.

A silence arose between Prince and Queen. Regina turned to David, quietly relishing his surprise that Mulan had tossed the sword to her rather than to him. "They'll be back. The souls. I'm still marked, and we no longer have Aurora to distract them. Let's figure out how to get out of here before that happens."

"But what will happen if they do come back? We can't die in here."

"No, Charming. But my soul can still be taken."


	14. Under the Sea

It seemed to mother and son that they had been swimming down for hours, unable to penetrate beyond a certain depth of the ocean. Emma shook her head at Henry, at a loss. She tossed up her hands, communicating to him that she thought Gold was wrong: maybe there was nothing and no one magical down here. She just couldn't believe that there was. _Look around: there's nothing!_ Henry shook his head violently.

"It's here!" he mouthed at her, bubbles spurting from his mouth. "Emma, have faith in me!" She knew, somehow, what he was mouthing, though she had never considered herself good at reading lips. She didn't need telling twice: she had learned of late to trust her son's intutition, his optimism, his... _faith_.

She closed her eyes, nodding at him, trying to concentrate on her faith in Henry rather than her anxieties about trusting Gold, about seeing Neal again, about Regina laying in Gold's office, lifeless and waiting for her. Sacrificed for her. Regina believed in Emma like Henry had believed in her when he ate that damned turnover. She might as well believe, too. When she opened her eyes - believing that Henry was right, there _was_ magic down here - Henry was smiling widely.

The reality around them shifted as the energy of Emma's belief seeped out of her veins and joined with Henry's, which had already saturated the water around them. The water itself luminesced brightly as the charges from their belief united, effervescing out into the depths beneath them, revealing what had previously been concealed by the muddied clouds of being grown up.

The constant, almost nauseous anxiety that had been gnawing violently at Emma's defenses like acid on flesh yielded somewhat to awe as she and Henry looked down. What had moments before been leagues of dark, monotonous, unrelenting and uninterrupted ocean was giving way to a vast array of colors, structures, living beings, sounds, textures. Feelings.

Schools of fish with stubby fins, regally purple bodies, and sun-yellow eyes tickled Henry's toes as they skated past. The bone-white skeletons of coral marked a vast graveyard to their right, while below, seemingly endless spires, gleaming in the flourescent lights of countless fishes' underbellies, towered over domes that appeared to Emma to be enormous, smooth snow globes, some translucent, some opaque, all bathed in the light of the bioluminescent fish. Emma felt her son nearby swoon with excitement, and she had to admit she wasn't immune. She had never thought of the ocean as having hills, plant life, and - well - societies, but as her wide eyes feasted on the rolling topography, the smooth gliding of fish with no visible eyes and herds and jellyfish dancing like globular rainbows in varying sizes and stages of development, heard - _was it really?_ - majestically ancient conversations of whales with tales to tell that were longer than her entire lifetime, she couldn't help but shiver in almost childlike delight.

Until, that is, she realized that she and Henry were surrounded by several merpeople, most of whom had fishing spears pointed directly in at them. Emma immediately raised her hands above her head, knowing all to well the drill when someone was pointing a weapon at you. But, to her surprise, the fishing spears were only thrust closer to her throat as she did so. She gulped as she felt one of the sharpened points graze her neck.

A burst of bubbles sent from Henry's mouth when he tried to shout her name directed her eyes - which had been scanning for a possible route of escape - toward her son, as the merpeople continued to close in on her. Henry emphatically hit his outer thighs with his hands - his arms were hanging straight down as his legs kicked like a little frog, treading water - and looked at her with meaning. Suddenly, she understood: in water, you raise your arms when you want to try and swim away, not when you're trying to surrender. She lowered her arms. The merpeople backed off.

"Thank you," she mouthed gratefully at her son. He gave her a small smile.

Emma turned her attention back to the merpeople. There was an almost sequin-esque scaley pattern to their fins, which seamlessly joined their torsos. Emma was pleased to find that some of the merpeople's upper fins were covered by protruding bellies; somehow Disney's consistently chiseled bodies had always irked her to no end. With a sense of wonder, Emma noted the beautifully intricate patterns in which scales became skin, skating spirals, swirls, and zigzags across their midsections, uniquely marking each individual in a sort of large-scale, highly-visible fingerprint. Some of these patterns traced all the way up abs and stretch marks to exposed breasts: none of the merpeople with breasts were covering them. _What would Disney say?_ Emma thought ruefully.

A young merperson swan directly up to Emma. She lacked a spear, Emma noted hopefully.

"Welcome to my father's kingdom." Emma heard a sweet melody in her ears, but also heard the English welcome in her head, even though the pale woman had only moved her lips to make the melodic tones. The blonde glanced at Henry, who was looking around curiously, as though for an explanation.

"Don't be afraid," the vocal tone in her ears and voice in her head continued. "We communicate differently under the sea: it makes things much easier, what with being enveloped in water. You're familiar with how whales communicate? We, too, communicate in song. You must have been given a special tonic to be able to understand us; most humans cannot o this without magical assistance."

Emma's displaced heart leapt as she heard Henry's voice in her head. "Am I doing this right? Can you hear me?" The woman in front of Emma smiled, her rich red hair floating beautifully behind her, her grin illuminating her pink lips and dazzlingly white, sparkling fin.

"Yes I can, little prince. My name is Ariel: what's yours?"

Henry practically heard Emma's snort in his head as she resisted facepalming in exasperation. It had really been some whirlwind of a few weeks. And now what was meeting _the _little mermaid?

"I'm Henry, and this is my mom, Emma. She's Snow White and Prince Charming's daughter, and we came down here on a quest to find magical squid ink!"

Ema smiled despite herself at the boy's eager bluntness. At the mention of her parents' names, she heard a murmur arise amongst the merpeople as they regarded her and Henry with new awe. She tried her hand at this communication thing, trusting, for perhaps the first time without prompting, her own magic to work its - well - magic.

"You didn't exactly seem happy to see us, Ariel," and she read Ariel's thoughtful expression and Henry's delighted smile as affirmation that her attempt to communicate was working. _Good old Gold_, she thought, unbidden, and hoped no one heard that, too. "Are we actually welcome here? Because the spear things sent a mixed message."

"I apologize for frightening you. But we needed to use some caution: think about what humans do to oceans, Princess Emma," Ariel answered mildly. "When we were swept to this realm in the wake of Hook's ship, we thought we would be safe until we found a way to return to our own sea. We have learned to deal with misogynist, looting scum like Hook and undersea hunters unimagined in your realm. But arriving here, our skins burned, and all of our corals almost immediately lost their colors and dried up." She gestured to her left at their skeletons. "This sea is too thick with heat and daily we have been assaulted by hunters' schemes and deadly poisons. We had to protect ourselves: the barrier you and Henry managed to pass through was a protective bubble on of our sorceresses conjured to keep people who ae not from our realm - who have no reason to believe in or even be aware of our presence here - from seeing or encountering us. It keeps out the heat and poison as well, for the most part."

Emma nodded slowly, her eyes everywhere, still in awe that she was deep in the ocean, talking with the little mermaid, who had addressed her as a princess. A concern floated through her rapidly-working mind.

"This barrier bubble thing: Henry and I didn't damage it coming through it, did we?"

Ariel shook her head, smiling at Emma's concern. "You too are from our realm, more or less. Your passing through was destiny, not damage."

"Ariel!" A higher-pitched frequency filled Emma's ears as a new voice entered her head.

"Eric?" she heard Ariel's voice responding, loudly. Emma blinked as a young merperson with dark skin and chiseled arms, a glittering green fin and magnificent hair, swan towards them rapidly, the other merpeople parting for his entrance.

"Ariel," he said again, touching her arms, barely glancing at Henry or Emma. "Your father knows of the strangers' presence. He's on his way, and he isn't very happy."

Ariel regarded Eric for a few moments, then reached for Henry's arm and looked at Emma. "Come," she said urgently, helping Henry swim quickly away. Eric offered his arm to Emma, who normally would have rejected the help, but he was offering, not imposing, and she certainly was rapidly becoming exhausted with all the treading water they were doing.

* * *

"So wait," she thought to Eric as they were racing away, "the story I've always heard is that Ariel gave up her voice to become human, to be with you." Eric grinned and shook her hiad.

"Other way around. We don't speak down here like humans do above ground, so I suppose I gave up my voice," he mused. "But I find this gives you a much deeper kind of communicating. Song is powerful." Emma had to agree: she appreciated the translation Gold's potion provided in her head, but found the tones that Eric and Ariel wove into melodies on a vocal leve were incredibly soothing.

Emma nodded. "So, what's the deal with her father? She did welcome me into his kingdom."

"Ariel may have, but Trident did not. He's always been overly protective and macho with his daughters. But when... when Ariel..."

"Got with you?" Emma guessed.

"Right. He kind of went overboard." He furrowed his brow as they swam. "No pun intended. He doens't approve of me - of humans - and he was going to have me killed." He smiled ruefully. "Ariel raised an army of mermaids, led by her and the sorceress. They were successful, until we were swept into this realm. We haven't been able to locate him since then, but the fish and crabs are abuzz with news that he emerged from wherever he was hiding when you pentetrated our barrier. He's apparently furious."

"Sorry," Emma murmured genuinely.

"Not at all," Eric answered mildly. "This confrontation would have happened at some point anyway. For now, we need to set you off on your quest."

"How do you know about that? You can read minds?" Maybe Gold's communication thing worked in reverse? She hoped not. She didn't want Henry hearing all her constant worrying about Regina, nor her abstract musings about how Regina would look with sparkling fins, swirling patterns on her torso, and topless.

"No. Ariel told me when I first came by. She whispered to me. Whispering down here is at a very low frequency: you must not have picked it up. It does take some getting used to," he ended empathetically.

Emma grimaced her thanks, watching Ariel pulling Henry effortlessly through the water ahead.

"So, where are you taking us?"

"You need squid ink. We're taking you to the sorceress who can provide you with it. Be warned: while Ariel has a strong understanding with her, others call her a witch."

* * *

Ariel and Eric left Emma and Henry alone above a deep-sea cavern, far away from the light of the sun or of the bioluminescent fish. The two squinted into the darkness, treading water at the mouth of the pitch-black cavern, peering inside cautiously. There was a large figure sitting deep inside the cave, which had dim lights pouring from within. The lights flickered like magical, undersea candles might. A voice from inside the cavern made them start.

"Child, didn't your mother ever teach you not to swim in an old witch's doorway and gawk without announcing yourself?"

Knowing they were caught, Emma glanced at Henry, who lifted his eyebrows, impressed. They drifted forward, Henry's form hidden slightly behind Emma's, blinking in the feeble light, which, despite its dimness, was infinitely brighter than the surrounding ocean.

"She never really got the chance, no," she said cautiously, but firmly and without trembling.

"Oh, you poor, un_for_tunate soul," the witch murmured, a slew of bubbles accompanying her ascent from her vanity.

"But you've someone else with you. Let me see the baby, let me see."

"I'm not a baby," Henry asserted, swooshing in front of Emma, defiant but not quite angry. Emma suppressed a smile.

The hazy figure of the witch continued to drift forward, as radiant skin - the rich purple of a ripe plum giving the cave what little luminescence it had - echoed throughout the enclave noiselessly.

As she drew ever nearer, a tentacle seeped forward, followed by another - its end shorter, injured - and another. And another.

Emma and Henry gazed down at them in awe.

"You're the squid," Emma breathed, looking back up at the well-formed breasts and sexily voluminous stomach of the merperson-looking torso with awe.

The witch raised an eyebrow and her deep, sensuous voice released into a chuckle. "Well now, dear, wherever did you hear of little old me?" She didn't wait for a response as she pressed on, "But yes, blondie, I did inherit my - shall we say - _squidlike _abilities from my second father. But for future reference, these are octopus tentacles by appearance. I see your mother didn't get the chance to teach you basic anatomy either." She appraisingly took in Emma's anatomy, eyes lingering slightly on Emma's see-through, soaking white tank highlighting her red bra. "But I see you're not from around these parts, so perhaps I'll consider forgiving you."

The witch glided fully into the light in front of Emma and Henry.

"And what shall I call my unexpected guests?"

"I'm Henry, and this is Emma," the precocious boy piped up.

The witch smiled down at him, amused. "They call me - variously - sorceress, witch, hag, demon, squid, villain, thief - the list goes on. But I prefer my given name - "

Henry whispered it at the same time as their host did:

"_Ursula_."


	15. The Queen of Hearts

Enraged, somewhat shocked, and in a fair amount of physical pain - the wraith's mark her former teacher had forced onto her hand scalded her skin as it peeled away - the Queen of Hearts found herself at the edge of the woods, the sign "Leaving Storybrooke" staring her mockingly in the face. Well, she had no intention of doing _that._ Though she had to admit, she was at a momentary loss: Gold had created a barrier around his shop to her in much the same way as she had conjured a barrier to Snow around Charming. _But where to go_? She looked around: nothing but road and forest.

And then she felt it: the pull of countless hearts, long separated from their bodies, steadily and subtly still thumping in their boxes. She smiled as she swirled her dress around her, disappearing once again - this time of her own accord - magicking herself to the best place in Storybrooke for her to be: her daughter's vault of hearts.

* * *

She forced a chuckle as she magicked aside the tombed marked "Beloved Father," trying not to wonder what her daughter would inscribe on her tombstone. She reflected mildly on her own hypocrisy as she swept down the stairs to the place where the beating of disembodied hearts grew stronger. _Love is weakness_, she'd tried to teach her daughter: and yet, when her daughter told her she loved her, she had mercy on her. Didn't rip her heart out as planned. And now she had journeyed back to Storybrooke, not for revenge, but to help her daughter. All for... what? Certainly not _love_. She scoffed at herself.

But Regina had stoof in her way, had willingly let herself be put under a Sleeping Curse instead of that... _woman_. The Swan girl. _Insolent thing_. Regina's behavior made it clear that she needed her mother now more than ever.

Cora reached into one of the boxes of hearts, hand penetrating the metal as though it were the flesh of a human chest. But colder, less forgiving. She retrieved a heart and smiled at its firm pulsation, its almost sensual glowing. She smiled and breathed into the organ, glancing around victoriously as the other hearts, locked away the Regina's vault, glowed through their casings.

She now controlled all the people from whom Regina had ever taken a heart. She relished the heady rush of power that flowed from bare organ to gloved flesh. Simultaneously, dozens across Storybrooke stopped whatever they were doing - showering, cooking their kids' breakfast, making love to long lost partners, going to work, unaware of such a threatening presence in their precious little community - and began walking, stiffly, into town.

An old enemy stood between she and her daughter. Cora's mindless slaves - ney Regina's heartless victims - converged on Rumpelstiltskin's shop.

* * *

"Your daughter still owes me a favor. And I assure you, Snow White, that now that the Saviour has access to magic, that favor has more value to me than ever before. I have no interest in her and her boy's failure on this mission: you need to trust me. They will succeed."

"Trust _you_," Snow scoffed.

"And what about Cora?" Red continued her friend's thoughts. "You banished her from your shop, fine, but we don't know where she is, what she'd doing: she could be harming anyone in Storybrooke right now, Gold. Why are we just _waiting_ here?"

"You," Rumpelstiltskin pointed a delicate finger at Ruby, "don't know Cora as I do. Her daughter is here." He swept his arms out towards Regina. "I'm here." He bowed slightly. "She will come back here to make her stand. I am sure of this."

All four looked up, tense, as the bell on Gold's shop door jingled urgently. Grumpy burst into the back room. Breathless, he forced out his message to Snow, who put her hand on his shoulder and waited, eyes wide. "The Queen's mother is controlling people! Dozens of them just up and left their homes; no one can restrain them. I got this for trying." He thrusted his arm forward, displaying a nasty cut on his tricep. "They're on their way here. Cora's coming."

"What do you mean she's _controlling _people?" Belle asked.

Grumpy looked at Belle sadly, remembering when _she_ had explained ways of life to _him_. "We notiched a pattern about them all: they all lost their hearts to the Queen. Cora must have taken control of those hearts: when you hold someone's heart, you have power over that person." Belle paled.

"So what do we do?" she asked readily.

"_You_ do nothing," Rumpelstiltskin answered to a bristling Belle, feeling protective of this woman for reasons he'd forgotten how name. Cora is _my _responsibility while Regina is - ah - incapacitated. I will deal with her."

Snow put her hand on the crook of his elbow as he made to leave the office. He again jumped at the voluntary touch. She had noticed the surprise at Cora's move in his eyes. She had never seen him surprised, and it alarmed her. "Let us help, Gold."

"Cora would like nothing better that to tear your heart out and have it waiting on a silver platter for daughter dearest when she awakens. You'd best stay inside, dearie."

"Those people she's... possessing, they're probably mostly my father's subjects. Let me help you protect them," she implored.

The children of the Ogres War flooed Rumpel's mind. He said nothing as he took in the sight of Belle's face one last time before limping out to meet Cora and her heartless army.


	16. The Sea-Witch and The King

"Oh, so you've heard of me!" Ursula exclaimed. "How delightful! Well, even if your mother didn't teach you anything, dear, at least your son received the benefit of a proper education," she said appraisingly to Emma, tossing her white hair back casually as it waved above her head, suspended in the water.

"I was told you could help us," Emma began, not really one for small talk. "Someone evil has come to the town on the coast, and she - "

"Oh, _evil_," the sea-witch scoffed. "Really now, _Princess_, I imagined you would have learned by now: evil is _highly_ subjective. I'd venture a guess that many would call that lover of yours _evil_."

Emma titled her chin to the side, eyes fixed steadily on Ursula. "And how would you know who my lover is? Or that I'm a... a... you know..."

"A princess!" Henry chimed gleefully, much less unnerved by Ursula's foreknowledge than Emma was, and thrilled to hear Emma unhesitatingly call Regina her lover.

Emma's eyes stayed fixed on Ursula warily. "Oh relax, _relax_, little one. I have no intention of harming you or _dear_ Regina; how is she, by the way?"

The blonde spluttered as her instincts to take a deep breath backfired. "_How do you know all this_?"

"I didn't get my reputation as a witch for nothing, Emma Swan. You've come because Regina's mother accompanied that scoundrel of a pirate to your town - Storybrooke, is it? - and you need some of my ink to immobilize her."

"Yes. And Regina's under a Sleeping Curse now, and we need to help her before Cora can continue hurting her. Not to mention everyone else. And you still haven't answered my - "

"Patience, child, patience," Ursula cooed as she backed further into her cave and rummaged in the stone drawers of what Emma saw was a vanity, hewed elegantly into the cavern's walls. Emma was relieved and intrigued to find that, despite her cool tones, a flash of concern had lit up Ursula's eyes when Emma mentioned that Regina was in imminent danger. "I know what I know because Regina was an ally of mine when everyone sought my death. Seems she is sensitive to lost love. I kept my eye on her closely before she cast that dreadful curse, and now that we're in proximity to her again, I've had my little birdie friends tell their little fishy friends all they could, to keep me up to date. Undersea isolation can become very dull, you understand."

"And why are you isolated?"

"Ariel's father wasn't pleased when he found that I helped his daughter with her little insurrection against him... I found it a better use of my valuable time to retreat for a while than to engage him immediately." She stretched her tentacles back, almost contentedly. "He really can be so tiresome." She waved her shortened tentacle in front of them. "And a real pain."

"He did that to you?" Henry asked, indignant. Ursula smiled.

"Don't fret, dear boy: I am more than capable of fighting for my own affairs. But yes, yes he did. And I'm afraid, Savior, that you're going to have to get past him to leave with this." She extended one of her merperson hands towards Emma, offering two vials. "The purple is my essence: a healthy supply of the ink you will need to immobilize Cora. I advise using a little at a time: it's powerful stuff." She winked flirtatiously at Emma, who blushed. "The bronze vial, now, this... this is my gift to you. It will transform anyone who drinks it into a baby again. They can begin their lives anew: a fresh start, Princess. Isn't that what we all wish for, in the end?"

"Why are you helping us like this?"

"Because I love the same woman you do, and I don't want her to be hurt" Ursula said, her sensuous voice dropping even lower than usual. "When she awakens, send Regina my warmest regards."

Emma furrowed her brow, but nodded her thanks. "Come on, Henry," she said gently. "Thank you," she offered Ursula earnestly.

"Be mindful of Ariel's father: King Triton is not to be taken lightly."

"Any help you can offer us with that?" Emma asked.

The sea-witch nodded gravely. "Help will come when you most need it, Princess. On that, you will have to go forth with nothing but faith in my word."

Emma looked at her for a long moment before glancing at Henry. He nodded at her, certain. "Thank you," she said again.

Emma slid the vials deep into her jeans pocket as they left the cavern and began to swim up.

She thought at Henry, "Well kid, I guess we really did grow up with warped versions of the fairy tales, huh?" She eagerly awaited his response as she swam. "Kid?" She turned her head towards where he had been, on the right side. She swiveled, weightless, in the water. "Kid? _KID_?!"

He was nowhere to be found. It wasn't for several breathless seconds that she realized that she was no longer in the same place she had been moments before: it had been so dark that she'd had difficulty registering her surroundings. She was in a vast valley, with high rocks on either side of the open cavern.

"_HENRY_!" she shouted with her mind, panic flooding her entire body.

"I'm afraid I wasn't interested in taking your son when I whisked you into my humble abode," a voice menaced in her mind. "I only wanted you, Emma. _Princess Emma_, if the rumors are true. What were you doing, consulting with the sea-witch, human?"

It took Emma a few moments of swimming in a desperate circle before her eyes adjusted enough to the dark to locate the source of the voice. A merperson with a dark blue fin, a beard, gaudy crown, and golden trident was hovering across the cavern, weapon primed at her face.

Emma found her sea voice deep in the recesses of her terrified mind.

"Yeah, I'm not answering any of your questions until you answer one of mine. What the hell did you do with my son?"

King Triton smiled. He was going to enjoy this battle.


	17. Phoenix Blood & the Escape

"So what do we do?" David asked urgently.

The Queen raised her eyebrows at him. "Aren't wraiths my problem, not yours?"

The Prince shifted uncomfortably. "You were a different person a few weeks ago."

"Let's hope you were, too," Regina murmured.

A sound almost like an ethereal swarm of bees filled their ears. "They're coming back," David said tensely. _He always _has_ had a penchant for stating the obvious. _

Regina looked quickly around the room, still dimly illuminated by the orb that Mulan had cast into the air. She tightened her grip on the soldier's sword, shifting to stand in front of David, closer to the precipice.

"Regina, this realm is more your arena than mine: _what do we do_?"

He had to shout this into her ear: the disembodied souls were surrounding them, their spine-tingling moans raising the hairs on the backs of both of their necks and filling their ears.

Regina turned her head to face David, her eyes wide with realization and her eyes damp with emotion.

"David, we need to jump."

The Prince blinked. "_That's_ what I'm supposed to trust you on?!"

"The last fall in this realm didn't harm us, David. We need to embrace the souls instead of fighting them. Can't you feel what they're saying?"

David looked at her as though he were concerned for her sanity. "They're... _communicating_ with you?"

"Nothing quite so obvious," she shouted back into his ear, a heated depression saturating the air around them. "You can't feel it?"

"Clearly not!" David shouted.

Regina was sure of what she knew instinctively: she felt the loneliness of the souls, as well as their simultaneous ecstasy at exploring a new realm with other beings in a form they could never have experienced in their bodies, encountering new ways of communicating, of connecting, of feeling. Of despairing. They could not let go of their disembodied loneliness, their new-found ecstasy in flight, in ethereal exploration of the other souls captured with them.

But Regina and David could. The souls wanted them to, somehow. Regina knew this. She grabbed David's wrist. "Regina, what - "

His question was lost as Regina jumped forward, down, down, down. Down. Down, sliding on the coldly smooth marble spiral, down, down, down. They picked up speed dramatically as David was bizarrely reminded of a water ride at an amusement park Katherine had shown him online, that she'd wanted to go to.

Falling through the souls looked like falling through clouds, but felt like falling through someone else's past. Bits and pieces of the lives of the lost souls overwhelmed Queen and Prince's senses and emotions: lonely children watching siblings cut down in war; ecstatic lovers in the throes of multiple orgasms with multiple partners; old women with dreams too big for the rest of their lives. Regina's heart broke as she felt the last moments of the souls, the physical pains of being ripped from their bodies, the terrifying sense of finality and utter uncertainty that she had felt herself before Emma came barreling into the Sheriff's station to save her. _How many lifetimes ago was that?_

Just as the spiral they were descending into looked as though it was getting to be too small for them to squeeze through - especially with the sword - Regina came into contact with Philip's soul and heard the memory of Aurora's devastated, desperate screams as his soul was wrenched from him. Her mind sought Emma's face and found it, comfortingly, as she hurtled towards a hole that was too small for her body to get through.

* * *

It took her several minutes to realize that the space in front of them had opened up as she turned her thoughts to her lover; that she was sprawled on the ground, sword dropped a few feet away from her, David half on top of her, breathless.

Regina was roused by the wet of his tears dripping down and mingling with hers on her face. She roughly did a quick push-up, rolling him off of her trembling body.

They both blinked in the blinding light of this new place.

David groaned and put his hand in front of his eyes, shielding himself from the dazzlingly bright, yellow light that characterized this room. "Regina? Where are we now? Is this the next layer of... of the Curse?"

Regina squinted around for Mulan's sword, crawling to pick it up, trying and failing to blink in the glaring brightness of their surroundings. "It would seem so," she murmured, almost more to herself than to her companion. "The last layer... phoenix ash and blood..."

David athletically swung his body up into a squatting position. "Doesn't seem so threatening... aside from this damned light..."

"Don't be deceived by appearances, Charming," Regina chided mildly.

David gasped suddenly, a ragged breath marked by hopeful disbelief as he rose slowly, entranced by something. Regina looked at him and brandished the sword in the direction of his line of vision. She was surprised to see that she saw what David did: a beautifully curvacious woman, a gorgeous, gently grey streak marking the right side of her brown hair. She wore a flowing, simple cloth dress and a magnificently loving smile. Regina lowered her sword slightly as David breathed the word she had guessed was about to come out of his mouth: "_Mother_."

"Welcome home, my son," Ruth said, able to touch David's face in this room as Regina and David had been able to touch in the last room. _How cruel it is, that the room Charming met Snow in was the one room they couldn't touch in, _Regina mused. _Oh dear lord, I am _not _sympathizing with those two._

Regina's eyes widened as the blinding light of the room dimmed, being replaced by the soft glow of the sun shining down on a beautiful field, a quaint little farm in the background. The Prince who was once a shepherd was home. Regina watched as he embraced his mother ecstatically, sadly waiting for him to realize that this was not - could never be - real.

"Regina."

A deep, graceful voice that she swore she would never hear again reached her ears. She turned toward the sound and saw the stables of her young womanhood, heard the rustle of horses shifting in their stalls, even smelt their precious hides and the musk of their excrement. Then her eyes were filled with the sight of her first True Love, whole and healthy, eyes shining with love, no sign of the desperate pain that had wracked his body when he had risen in Storybrooke.

For both David and Regina, the phoenix had risen.

* * *

Daniel dropped the saddle he was holding, opening his arms to rush into Regina's. He pressed his forehead against hers. For a small moment, she forgot what she had thought when watching David embracing his mother: that this could not be real. Daniel was dead. Ruth was dead. For a small moment, Regina forgot.

She lifted her teary eyes to meet Daniel's, relishing the love and adoration she found in them. But they were not green. They were not Emma's.

"Oh, Daniel," the broken woman whispered, fear filling her, wondering how long she could remain strong. "This isn't real. You aren't real. None of this," she looked around at the surrounding stables, "is really here. _I'm _not really here. I need to get back to Emma. You told me to love again, and I do. And now Emma needs me. _Henry_ needs me. My Henry."

As her lips uttered her son's name, a warm tingling seeped through her hand, flowing up her arm and sending a subtle shudder through her whole body. She looked down at her hand: Mulan's sword glowed warm and disappeared. Something deep inside her being knew thather son was in danger, felt that the sword had been sent to help him.

And now to help his grandfather.

Regina's heart shuddered sadly as she felt Daniel's touch evaporate from her body, watched the stable of her youth dissolve from her eyes, the strength of her need to get back to Henry - to get back to Emma - sending her phoenix up in flames. Again. She turned to David, who was deep in conversation with the apparition of his mother.

"David," Regina called. "David, none of this is real. You need to get back to your family. This woman is not your mother, David. I'm sorry, but she died. In our land. This is only the netherworld created by the Sleeping Curse we're under."

Ruth turned to look at Regina with confusion in her eyes. "Come back inside, my son, and you can tell me all about your new life with Snow White."

David stared at Ruth, blinking hard as Regina's words sank in. He looked around him and saw the ashes starting to fall from the previously clear blue sky. His phoenix was starting to burn down. "Mother," he choked, smiling a small smile. "I love you. Goodbye."

Her face sunk sadly as he backed out of her embrace, tears streaking down his eyes.

He turned to look at Regina, rage creeping into his face as his mother crumbled into ashes. "She didn't _die_, Regina. She was _murdered_. And that was _your_ fault!" He thrust his finger into her face aggressively, with outrage but without relish.

"I - " Regina's voice flickered as David froze, scowl fading into confusion as he watched Regina's body wink in and out of his vision. She looked down at her own flickering form, eyes wide. "I'm waking up." She smiled widely. "David, focus on Mary Margaret, you'll wake too..."

Her voice evaporated along with her physical form; David's followed in her wake. They were blinking back into their bodies; back into Storybrooke.


	18. Undersea Sword Fight

_"Yeah, I'm not answering any of your questions until you answer one of mine. What the hell did you do with my son?"_

_King Triton smiled. He was going to enjoy this battle._

"Oh, your son is right where you left him. I whisked you away, not him. He is probably in the clutches of your friend the sea-witch. Now I ask you again, and my patience is running thin: what did you want from her?" It seemed he already had some of his answer, however, as Emma felt her pocket deflate as the vials Ursula had given her disappeared and rematerialized on a ledge of the cavern behind Triton, who was rapidly approaching Emma.

Ignoring the King's question, Emma's eyes darted about for a route of escape or a weapon of some kind. She spoke to distract Triton. "She's Ariel's mother, isn't she? Ursula. That's why you hate her so much, because she - what? - threatens the 'purity' of your kingdom's leadership?" She held up air quotes, disgusted.

"I hate her because she's evil," Triton retorted, thrusting his trident towards her chest. Emma didn't flinch, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. She merely kept her hands settled at her side, fluttering slightly to help her legs keep her treading water.

"Well, I've been constantly re-evaluating my definition of 'evil' lately, so I don't know what to say to that. Context? Intent? I don't know if any of that, any of those definitions, really matter, but I do know that you can't keep your daughter from loving and living with whoever the hell she wants. That's not going to keep her closer. It's only going to push her away, even more than she's already been pushed."

Triton menacingly swung his trident up to the soft skin of her throat. Emma raised her head, but didn't break eye contact.

"The fish are abuzz with your story, Princess," he sneered. "You know nothing of the sacrifices parents make for their children. You know nothing about being a parent, nor anything about being a child. Let's see what you can discover about being a mermaid, bound by human weaponry, shall we?" He flashed his trident down to her feet, around which was suddenly clasped a thick chain with an iron ball attached to its end. Her stomach sank even faster than her body as she tried, futilely, to swim upwards with her arms. Triton laughed humorlessly at her flailing.

"Why are you doing this, Triton?" she thought-shouted as she rapidly descended. The water was already almost intolerably freezing.

"Humans," the King snarled. "So arrogant. You think I owe you any explanations? I do not, but I will amuse myself with giving you one. My daughter's perspective is poisoned by her _love_ for that human boy, but she knows as well as I do what humans devote their time to doing to the seas. Your insolence and destruction is even worse in this realm than in ours. From the influence of that boy, Ariel has come to believe in _peace_ with you humans, but 'peace' always comes on the terms of you two-legged sharks. You say you are reevaluating 'evil,' my dear princess: think on that while you sink your way, two legs become one, to the depths of the ocean that you _humans_ poison."

Before Emma could respond, she heard her son's voice explode in her head, which was fast becoming hazy with the rapid increase in pressure and decrease in temperature, much less gradual than that which she and Henry had experienced swimming down to Ursula's cavern.

"_Mom!_"

Henry launched a sword, hilt first, at her, and as Triton's eyes widened in shock, Emma splayed forward to catch the sword deftly with her right hand, simultaneously yanking her legs - _god, my abs are gonna regret this move tomorrow_ - so that her bound ankles were within reach of the sword, which she sliced down into the metallic chains that Triton had bound them with. To her relief and slight surprise, they sliced right through her bonds, and her body shot upwards as her struggle to stop sinking was finally rewarded, now that the iron ball and chains themselves were descending the ocean's depths without their victim attached to them.

"Henry, get behind me," Emma thought urgently as Triton let out a yell that roared in their skulls and beat on their eardrums with its deep tones.

Nerves shot through Emma as she swung the sword up with both hands, ready, in front of her face. Her eyes met Triton's evenly as his narrowed, muscles rippling as he, one-handed, flourished his trident in a figure-eight. A jet of golden light shot violently from the middle fork of the trident, scorching the water it encountered, ripping molecules apart as it streamed towards Emma. She roughly tilted her sword - which looked and felt oddly familiar to her - to meet the beam, blasting backwards a few feet as the metal absorbed Triton's magic, sending a golden, pulsing hue up and down the sword's shaft, imbibing it with energy. The king's eyes widened in disbelief as Emma smirked confidently, reaching a hand back to keep Henry directly behind her as she kicked forward, coming back into Trident's space.

"You want revenge, Triton," Emma grunted as he slammed his trident down to slash her face. She met his blow with her sword and swam up urgently with her legs to help her push forward to repel his weapon. Henry watched open-mouthed as the eerie sound of magical blade meeting magical trident under water reached his ears; the noise cried out like a dented cymbal on a broken heart.

Emma swung her sword sideways towards Trident's waist, and the deliberation with which he twisted his instrument to clash with hers against the water's friction made Henry think of staged dueling, slowed down for the benefit of an apprentice.

Emma continued her line of thinking as Triton deflected her blow, trying to ignore the violent vibrations that worked their way up her arms and through her entire body as their weapons connected.

"I get it." She swung her sword quickly across her body in a downwards motion, deflecting him as he thrust the trident straight forward.

"You want the attacks on the ocean to stop." Sword met trident directly above their heads as their eyes mirrored their weapons. "I get it. I do." She fought exhaustion as her body worked even harder than her mind was. It was a lot harder to swing the damn thing in water than it would have been on land; all that extra resistance. Still, she felt a subtle surge of energy pulsing between herself and the hilt, as though the sword itself anticipated the twitching of her muscle fibers, helping her along. Inexplicably, she felt traces of Regina in the sword that looked and felt - _how could it be?_ - just like Mulan's.

"But stopping Henry and I from getting home is only going to - " She paused in her thinking to him as he wrenched the trident out of their connection and swung it sideways at her waist. She twisted her arms to block his attempt. " - make it worse. The person we need to stop, she - " She caught him unaware and her sword connected, slid in between the forked prongs of his trident, the tip of the blade inches from his face. " - is only going to bring destruction, to land _and_ water."

Emma felt a rush of bubbles behind her as she caught Henry out of the corner of her eye, darting like a guppy to the little outcropping of undersea rock that Triton had magicked their potions to. Triton, seeing him too, roughly wrenched his trident upwards, sliding Emma's sword out of place as she flipped backward, weightless, at the force of his movement.

"Henry!" she screamed, inhaling water as she instinctively shouted this with her mouth, fighting to re-position herself. She kicked her legs as hard as she could, launching herself in front of the stream of hot magic Triton was conjuring, shouting towards the child as he slipped the potions into his pocket. Emma thrust the sword out in front of her, hoping it was long enough to reach and block the beam. It wasn't.

But at the last moment, Emma felt her body being rapidly pulled forward - _by the sword?_ - bones rattling as the sword slammed to a halt in front of Triton's ray, deflected instead of absorbing the magic, echoing with a deafening roar the spell Triton had sent at the human child back upon himself.

"No!" A flash of red hair streamed into view as a strangled yell blasted through Emma's mind. A strong body came hurtling towards Triton, roughly tackling him out of the way of the beam. The returning jolt of magic just missed both father and daughter, crackling instead on a far distant spire whose tip tumbled down and thudded into the ocean depths, the shockwave blowing Ariel's hair out of her face and Emma's behind her.

Stunned, Triton's hold on his weapon had slackened. His daughter wrenched it out of his grasp and held it steadily at his chest. "You've lost, Daddy," she said softly. Without looking at Emma or Henry, her next words rang out in their heads firmly. "Go," she said. "Bring whatever Ursula gave you back and make good use of it."

"Ariel," Emma thought, disoriented. "Your father: he's cruel, but he's not wrong about some things, you know."

"Nor, I'm sure, are your adversaries on land. Now go!"

Emma thought of Regina painfully and nodded, taking Henry's hand into one of hers. She held the sword in the other as they kicked towards the surface.

* * *

Their ascent was long, and there were things Emma still didn't understand. "Henry, I think I know whose sword this is. Unless there are more like it, but it looks the same, and it feels..." She trailed off, unsure how to describe to the boy that she felt, somehow, Regina's essence - her fears, her loves - coursing through the regal weapon that was similar in every detail to Mulan's. "Where did you get it?"

"When you disappeared, Ursula came out of her cave. I told her what happened - you just vanished! - and she sent for these two people to watch me. They were flat, almost like paper, but thicker, maybe like a book, but they had arms instead of fins about where their shoulders would have been. Their skin was grey and looked wrinkly, like an elephant's, but when they held my hands, it was smooth, like a pebble."

Emma would normally marvel at her child's descriptiveness - no doubt the product of his voracious reading - but she was impatient to hear more plot-oriented details. He seemed to sense this. "Emma, it was Flotsam and Jetsum, like from the movie, except they were eels with arms. They told me they would take care of me until Ariel and Eric found you - Ursula said she sent word to them - but I said _I _wanted to find you. They argued with me, but Flotsam said if they had a kid, they hoped it would love them as much as I love you." Henry blushed a little here. "So they taught me how to listen for disturbances in the water, how to listen for you against all the other ocean noises. I did, and, well, I guess I found you just in time."

"Where are they now? And what about the sword?" Emma insisted.

"I'm getting to that. They couldn't come with me to where you were. They tried, but the caverny thing had some sort of enchantment on it: it kept them out, maybe like how Mr. Gold is protecting his shop from Cora. I could go in, though, and just when I was about to go in alone - they didn't want me to, but I think they knew they couldn't stop me - I - I - Emma, I heard _Mom_." Emma would have tripped if they'd been walking on land.

"You heard _Regina_? Kid, what are you talking about?

"She just said my name. _Henry_. I was scared, and I think she was scared, too. And then I saw this sparkling in the rock face, and it... it was the sword. I pulled it out and they said it was magical. And, well... you know the rest," he finished somewhat sheepishly.

Emma blinked. "The _sword_ was in a _stone_ and pulled it out? Seriously? How princely of you," she deadpanned, trying to mask her own fear. Regina was scared? Did she send Henry the sword? Was she now defenseless, wherever she was in her mind? But if she was still under the Sleeping Curse - how could she not be? - how could she have sent Henry anything?

Henry just looked at her, knowing she was deflecting attention from her own anxiety, lips pursed in a very Regina-esque fashion. Emma tried again. "Your mom is okay, Henry. I... I felt her, too. When I was using the sword, it... it felt like her... I don't know how... but I think she sent us help... and I think... well, Mulan's sword also absorbed magic, and it looked and felt a load like this one... I just don't understand how any of this makes sense..."

Henry seemed worried about Regina, but relatively unperturbed by the sword's appearance. "Magic is different here," he offered, shrugging lightly as he swam. "I'm sure Mom will tell us all about it when you wake her." He offered her a small smile, which she returned as he paused to watch a sting ray undulate gracefully above them. It seemed unable to rise above a certain point in the water: they had reached Ursula's magical barrier. Emma tightened her grip on both Henry's hand and on the hilt of the sword as they both took their last look down at the majestically glistening domes and crystalline spires of the kingdom.

Not knowing how to articulate their thoughts, parent and child focused on getting back to Storybrooke as they shot up through the invisible barrier, tingling down to their cell membranes as they ascended.

* * *

Emma gasped as her hand keened in loss. She looked down. The sword was gone.

"What the - ?" she sputtered, Henry no longer able to hear her because they had left the particular kind of magical energy that interacted with their potions to help them communicate underwater. The child looked confused, but not surprised as he looked down at her empty hand.

She checked her pocket frantically for the vials that Ursula had given them and that Henry had given back to her: sighing in relief that they were still there, she smiled at her kid.

Sword or no, they were in the home stretch: they swam up, and up, and up.


	19. In Which Regina Makes it Rain Hearts

The energy of transitioning from the netherworld of the Sleeping Curse back to Storybrooke enlivened Regina's body. Dangerously. The magical connection between realms that enabled them to return shuddered through every aspect of her spirit, wakening the fairy magic she thought she'd quelled after absorbing it from the well to save Emma and Mary Margaret. The activated fairy magic set her bones on fire as it clashed with her own brand of passion-driven magic.

But it also gave her a clarity that she had only before grasped at: Emma was in dire need of help. Henry was with her, also in agony. She could see it so clearly.

She opened her eyes, knowing she needed to get to where her family was. She only hope her body - and that damned fairy magic - would cooperate.

* * *

A loud gasp of intense pain and a strong gulp of air froze Gold on the threshold of his shop door. Exchanging a brief, confused looked with a saucer-eyed Mary Margaret - who could swear she recognized the voice characterizing that gulp of air - Rumpelstiltskin and Snow White tore back into his office.

Belle - her capacity to forgive at once incomprehensible and astoundingly sexy to Red - was leaning over Regina's rigid body, running her hands soothingly up and down her alarmingly stiff arms. Red was joyously helping David stand up, the barrier Cora had placed around him shattered by the powerful discharge of energy that had accompanied his and Regina's successful escape from their own Sleeping Curses.

Snow yelped in shocked excitement and darted over to embrace her husband. Belle turned worried eyes to look at Rumpelstiltskin: "Something's wrong with her."

"Well, that's not new," Gold murmured humorlessly, curiously taking a step forward to examine his former student, who was still laying where Emma had placed her, awake but stiff with apparent pain, drawing breath raggedly.

Belle gasped in stunned pain and jumped away from Regina, shaking out her hands as though they'd been burned. And indeed they had been: Regina had begun radiating a heat so powerful that Rumpelstiltskin began to sweat from a few paces away.

"What's happening to her?" Red asked, her compassion aroused by any sort of episode where magical forces overwhelmed someone's body; even if that person was the Evil Queen.

"_Em-ma_," Regina groaned, her voice as though it had journeyed from a far distant realm. She sat bolt upright, her skin glimmering with a thin, almost elegant gleam of sweat, a smoky purple replacing the usual malt of chocolate in her eyes. Her extremities were crackling with the energy of faint green magic.

"Need to get to Em-ma. He's hurting her, Gold." Regina sounded like she was begging, but for what exactly, none but her former teacher could tell.

"You need to use it, Regina. Harness the energy: Cora stole the hearts from your vault and is outside with her army right now. Concentrate, Regina: use it to help Ms. Swan."

"Not Cora. _Him,_" Regina responded from the depths of her throat, clearly struggling to utilize Rumpel's guidance.

"Emma's in danger? How do you know?" Snow was ever the terrified, curious little girl whose life the miller's granddaughter had saved all those years ago.

"Can see it," Regina moaned, still gleaming; she stiffly swung her legs off of the counter and hopped down from where Emma had laid her.

"Regina." Gold stood in front of her. "Use it. Focus it."

"It hurts!" If she were anyone else, it would have been a defeated whine. But she had always felt herself above that, and her frustrated, throat-tearing yelp was merely a statement of fact.

"Is someone going to tell us what's going on?" Red tried again.

"Regina, what's happening to you?" David asked desperately as they all heard the front door of Gold's shop slam open. His shield was impervious to Cora herself, it seemed, but not to people whose bodies she was controlling.

Regina swallowed hard, using all her strength to focus on saving Emma, not on the horror she so keenly sensed that the younger woman was experiencing. She concentrated on her old teacher's words: _harness it_. Harness the fear, harness the pain, harness the panic, harness the intensity of the energy that was overwhelming her entire being.

"No time to explain, Charming. I'm about to save your daughter. And all the rest of you, too."

She stepped out of Gold's interior office and raised her arms above her head; the townspeople whose hearts she had taken in another life - that Cora was now controlling - froze at the vision of the radiant woman, fingertips crackling with barely-contained magic and eyes brimming with purple luminescence.

"Gold, what the hell is going on?" Ruby tried for a final time, in a whisper.

"It seems that in waking themselves from the Sleeping Curse - it is possible without True Love's Kiss, though exceedingly rare - Regina reactivated the fairy magic that she absorbed from the portal that brought Emma and Mary Margaret home. Let's see if she knows how to control it..." Snow noted with disdain that Rumpel seemed to be taking immense pleasure from watching his former pupil be challenged in such a painful way. _Ugh, I am _not_ feeling sympathy for her._

They watched as Regina slowly lowered her arms. All present expected a blast that would send the controlled townspeople, possibly in several pieces, out onto the street, but instead, they were lifted slowly off the ground, coasting gently backwards out the door. Regina stepped outside after them, finding herself facing not only more of the dozens whose hearts she'd once taken, but her mother. Cora - for the first time in a long time - looked thoroughly startled.

"_Regina_," she breathed. "How did you - "

"No time, Mother," the Queen informed the Queen of Hearts. Like cracking a whip, Regina raised her arms rapidly, imperiously, up above her head before snapping them down and out gracefully, tossing her head back in the same self-sacrificial position she'd assumed when she absorbed all this magic to begin with.

Cora let out an angry yell and sent binding ropes her daughter's way, but they disintegrated as they met the fairy magic that was pouring out of Regina, streaming on all sides throughout the street.

Red, Belle, Charming, and Snow stepped out of Gold's shop, the first two holding hands and tossing their hair out of their eyes and squinting to compensate for the wind and energy that was emanating from the former mayor's body. Gold watched with an interested scowl from the shadow of the doorway as abnormally large, red raindrops filled the cloudless sky above his protege.

"Are those - " Red asked with growing dread and alarm, remembering the horror of the last time she saw one.

"Hearts," Snow whispered, her eyes not leaving Cora, though everyone else was fixated on Regina, who suddenly thrust her arms forward, bending forward at the waist with the strength of the effort. Each heart - for Snow was right: Regina had summoned dozens of hearts to the space around her, one for each of her former victims - whistled through the air and squelched uncomfortably back into the chests of the people who had long survived without them.

Cora shrieked in rage and disappeared with a dramatic swish of her dress. Regina collapsed onto her knees, joining dozens of others - feeling their hearts beating in their chests for the first time in decades - on the ground. _There's no time for this_.

She forced herself up and faced David and Snow, who were looking at her uncertainly as Ruby and Belle had rushed to help those who had just been freed from others' control.

"Emma's in trouble," she told them urgently, panting, the chocolate color back in her eyes and the green glow nowhere to be seen.

"In the ocean?" Snow asked as Charming looked confused.

"No," Regina answered simply, magicking David's sword into his stunned hand before flicking her wrist at them, whisking the three of them to the top deck of Captain Hook's ship.


	20. In Which the Queen Saves the Savior

***TRIGGER WARNING* for rape, torture-y stuff, and general violence. **

* * *

Mother and son broke water sputtering but thoroughly pleased with themselves. Breathless, Emma wrapped one arm around Henry, tousled his sopping hair, and helped his exhausted body along with hers towards the dock. She yanked on one of the ropes securing Hook's ship to the harbor: it would easily take their weight.

"Can you pull yourself up, kid?" she asked him.

"Yeah," he said, his eyes glazed with the exhilaration of success and adventure. As he lifted his body out of the water and scrambled to swing his legs over the dock to climb up - he certainly inherited her quirky combination of athleticism and lack of grace - she received several mouthfuls of water from his dripping clothes.

"Sorry!" she heard his playful voice yell as he dragged himself onto the wooden slats. She looked up as his body disappeared onto land, expecting to see his shining face gleefully peering down at her, watching her come up and offering a hand.

It did not. There was only silence where she should have heard the sounds of his soaking figure clambering around, readjusting to being on land. A deep panic filled her, one that she had not known since he had eaten that damned apple turnover, to save her; to save everyone. "Henry?" No response. "_HENRY!"_

With one rough tug on the dangling rope, she yanked herself high enough to swing one of her legs onto the dock. Over-zealous in her effort, she overbalanced and nearly collapsed back into the water. A majestically shined hook, attached to the arm of a man she had never wanted to see again, appeared in her line of vision, steadily offered as something to grab hold of. Her stomach plummeted as she rebalanced herself on her own and launched herself onto the deck, slamming roughly into the man's waiting figure.

"Emma," he smiled, not missing a beat. "How absolutely ravishing you look when your clothes are soaked and see-through." Before she had the chance to do more than get her footing and open her mouth, the captain slammed her temple with the blunt side of his hook. She was out cold before she hit the ground.

* * *

Her head throbbed impossibly, and for a moment she wondered if it had all been one big drunken dream. But she was soaked, her arms and ankles secured firmly, painfully, behind her back, and she smelled sea air in her nostrils.

_Henry_.

She forced her eyes open into the too-bright light to find Hook sitting daintily on the steps leading up to the steering wheel of his ship, leering at her. She looked wildly around for her son and quickly located him, wild-eyed and clearly trying to yell from behind a red gag. He was, like his mother, tied upright to a wooden pillar, with a full-view of his bound and bleeding mother.

"Good morning, pet," Hook greeted her cheerfully.

"Hook, this is between us; let him go." She was pleased that she sounded infinitely more confident than she felt.

His smile firmly in place, Hook rose slowly and advanced on Emma. "Always about business, aren't we, Emma Swan? And I must say I appreciate that, because I have some business I'd very much like to discuss with you." His tone was still light.

"Hook, please - " _Losing it a little, Swan. Keep it cool_.

"Oho, polite all of a sudden, aren't we?"

"Hook - " Firmer now, enraged and emboldened by his mockery.

Still smiling, he slammed the blunt side of his hook across her mouth. She spit blood and heard Henry yelping, saw him struggling desperately against his bonds. Tears flooded Emma's eyes now as she struggled to keep pain out of her face for Henry. _Henry_.

The smile had left Hook's face. "When I want you to speak, Emma Swan, rest assured that I will inform you. Now. You have something I require: the ink I need to skin my crocodile. You also have something I desire. And as I see it, Swan, you owe me at least one of these things. I got you the compass, you took everything from me - betrayed me, several times - so now I'll take from you what I need." She struggled unsuccessfully against the ropes as he removed the vials of ink and potion from her pocket. He dangled them in front of her.

"What I require. And now, I think, is time to take what I _desire_. But I'd like to think that I'm an honorable man, Emma, so I'll be generous: how about combining what I want with a little lesson for your boy? Hm?" His face was mere inches from hers. Eyes not leaving Emma's, he raised his voice. "Henry! Tell me, lad, have you ever fantasized about being a pirate?"

Terrified into honesty, Henry nodded. Hook glanced at him and his smile returned, his gaze fixed back onto Emma. "Good lad. And as luck would have it, dear Henry, you are currently aboard the ship of the most magnificent pirate ever to live: myself, of course. And I'm going to give you your first pirating lesson today, free of charge! Now, doesn't that sound exciting?"

Emma could feel Henry trembling from where she stood, and she never knew her heart could be sliced into so many pieces and still beat. Hook uttered his next words with careful deliberation, addressing them more to Emma than to Henry, his eyes boring into hers violently.

"Your first lesson will be in how pirates deal with treacherous little sluts like your mother, Henry. Pay close attention, now."

"Hook, please," she began, her breath ragged and her voice all but completely broken, "not in front of him, he's a child, he's my son - "

The captain raised his Hook and Emma inhaled sharply as Henry screamed behind his gag and writhed against his restraints. Instead of crashing down on his captive's face again, the captor tore his hook down with lightning speed, slicing the front of Emma's jeans open with precision, metal menacingly grazing the vulnerable flesh between her legs. Tearing the denim open wider, Hook pressed himself into her hips, bringing his fingered hand down to unlatch the front of his pants as she nearly vomited at the feeling of his hard cock pressing into her trembling body.

Henry's throat-ripping screams through his gag tore into Emma's body harder than any unwanted cock ever could, as she tried one last time.

"Please, Hook, not in front of my - "

"Oh nonsense, Ms. Swan, my father showed me this at a young enough age. And what I learned was really quite instructive, you see." His eyes sparkled with venom and - _was it pain? lost love? grief? disappointment? _- as he poised himself at her vulnerable entrance. "There's only one way to deal with women as conniving as you." Not taking his eyes off of hers, he dug his hand into her hair, yanked her head back into the wooden plank to which she was tied, and roughly slammed his hips forward, forcing himself fully into her body, sending a pain throughout her entire being that was so profound that she wasn't sure if she was even still alive. _Henry. Henry. Henry. Regina._

* * *

And suddenly it was over, a deafening bang overshadowing Henry's muffled screams, and she opened her eyes to see - she must be dead, because it was impossible - a figure she knew quite well kicking her heel directly into Hook's crotch, sending him careening backwards even farther than her magic had. His shout of anger and pain filled the ship and Emma's bones as the apparition wrenched his hook out of its socket and chucked it, in one swift motion, into the water.

Hook's screams ignited the air as Regina Mills, literally glowing with grieved rage, pummeled her fists, magic forgotten, over and over and over again, onto Hook's face, repeatedly slamming her heels into his crotch when her knuckles grew raw with their attentions to his face.

"Move, Regina," Emma heard a deep voice say as she felt the trembling fingers of her mother untying her.

David was standing, poised with his sword high above his head, above the writhing figure of Hook, paralyzed by the strength of Regina's rage and the agonizing impact of the Queen's footwear on his crotch. Glancing up from her assault on Hook's face, Regina backed away from the man, kicking him roughly as she did so, her face awash with tears and her body trembling even harder than Emma's was.

"No! Wait!" Emma found her shaking voice as Snow finished untying her and Regina removed Henry's gag, stroking his face endlessly as she sobbed openly and released him from his bonds.

"Don't kill him," she choked out as Regina turned to look at her, face contorted with terrified awe and confusion.

She looked at David and saw that tears covered his face as well. "Emma, he's a monster, we saw what he did to you."

"Yeah, maybe he really fucking is. But he did it to _me_, David, so _I_ get to decide what happens now." She tried to glance down at the man, and gagged at the sight of him. She turned away from Henry and Regina and wretched violently, leaning against the pillar for support, thinking hard and fast as her stomach flipped outward out of her mouth. She remembered what he said about his father, and furious empathy filled her. An idea struck her as she wiped her mouth roughly with the back of her hand.

"When Henry and I were in the ocean, we didn't just get the ink. Ursula gave us this potion thing that lets you start your life over, as a baby. I thought we could use it on Cora, but we - we'll find something else for her." She thought of Henry's report of Flotsam and Jetsum. "I know just the people that would want a baby." Her body shuddered, not knowing if she was ready to look at the woman who was standing at her side, embracing their crying son, unsure if the blonde was ready to be touched.

"Regina," her voice quaked, avoiding her eyes, "is there some sort of spell that you could use to make him a merperson baby?" Regina nodded shakily, wearily.

"But Emma," she said cautiously, "you don't feel he deserves - "

"Do I _feel _that hedeserves to die? Oh yeah. But do I _think_ he does? Not for a second. Just like you don't deserve to die. Revenge can't help," she said thickly. She glanced at Regina, not wanting her comment to come off as an aggression towards the Queen's horrific past.

Meeting her lover's wild, tear-filled, agony-laden eyes broke something in Emma. She fell to her knees at the feet of her son and lover as Regina whispered the words that Emma hadn't the strength for. "But your family can."

Emma gathered her weeping son into her arms as Regina took Emma tenderly into hers and Snow roughly tied Hook up and gagged him, for once taking a leaf out of Regina's book and giving him a sound kick as she stood. Satisfied that Hook was secured, Emma's grief-stricken parents hovered over the Swan-Mills family, silently crying into each other. One of the first images David had of his grown daughter was of her tied to a post on a ship, being raped in front of his grandson... He sobbed into Snow's quaking shoulder. Steadied somewhat by the energizing force of the magic that was their touch, Emma gently pulled back from Regina and Henry's embrace, trembling hands cupping Henry's face.

"I'm alright now, Henry. I'm safe. And so are you. And so is your mom." She paused and looked up at Regina. "Speaking of which, how - ?"

"It's a long story, dear," Regina said, not unkindly. "Henry?" She changed her tone gently. "You know you can talk to us about what happened, when you're ready."

"Eyecunnenheloo," Henry choked between sobs. Regina and Emma glanced at each other, nonplussed.

"Say it again, kid," Emma encouraged softly. Silently, his mothers willed the energy of their magic to flow deeper into him, and they watched it steady him as he gulped for calmer breaths. He lifted his tortured eyes to Emma.

"He was hurting you, and I couldn't help you," he moaned. Emma's face screwed up in agony and she pulled him forward into her chest, clutching him desperately, hoping against hope that letting him leave the water first hadn't completely shattered his ability to believe in the "good" that he held so dear. She looked helplessly at Regina, whose mascara had almost completely blackened her face. The older woman took a deep breath, nuzzling her face into his hair.

Voice trembling only slightly, Regina spoke. "I know what that feels like, honey. And I know that that helplessness when someone we love is in pain is the worst feeling in all the realms." Emma thought about the hatred in Regina's eyes as she punched and kicked Hook. "But you know what, sweetheart?" Henry sniffed a response into Emma's chest, and both women smiled ruefully at his persistent adorableness. "Sometimes even the strongest heroes are helpless, but do you know what it is that makes sure that - that _good_ still wins, no matter what?" Henry emerged from Emma's chest, looking in hope at his mother.

"What?" he asked, his voice thick and teary. Emma's heart soared: he wanted to know, which meant he hadn't given up. Regina leaned closer to Henry's face conspiratorially and smiled gently, hopefully.

"_Love_," she whispered, as Emma nodded emphatically and Snow's heart broken again, remembering when a much younger, much less damaged Regina had talked about love like that to her.

A slow, small, trusting smile crept across Henry's face. Regina nuzzled his nose with hers, and his hesitant smile broadened. "Now go with your grandparents for a moment, Henry, so I can get your mother cleaned up." He hesitated.

"We'll be right here, kid," Emma assured him. He nodded and rose.

"Oh, Henry," Regina called. He looked down at her. Regina waved her hand and with a subtle whirl of the air around him, he was completely dry, and the bruises and scrapes from his struggles against the ropes had vanished.

"_Cool_," he whispered in gratitude, and he scampered into the open arms of Snow and Charming.

* * *

Left alone, a silence grew between the lovers. Regina didn't know what Emma was ready to face, but she knew that the completely uncensored rage that she had unleashed on Hook spoke more to Emma of her love for her than words or any of her other actions yet had. In her anger, she had made herself vulnerable, though not nearly as vulnerable, she knew, as her lover, always miming and aspiring to a thick skin, who had been forced open, in front of her son, then in front of her new lover and newly-found parents. The older woman was intimately familiar with overwhelming fear, intense physical pain, and humiliation, but she knew even she could not begin to fathom Emma's trauma. As for the Savior, she didn't know how to look at her Queen, knowing that Regina was quite possibly in more pain than she was: she knew how broken she would be if the roles were reversed. She certainly was in unbearable agony herself, having failed to protect their son from perhaps the most horrible thing he could have witnessed, wondering how to address the woman with whom she had just confessed love and a desire to be a family. _Was that only hours ago?_ It seemed impossible, like so many other things did at that moment.

"Em-ma." Regina's soft whisper, her unique annunciation of her name, roused the blonde from her numbly pained reflections. Emma made a noise in the back of her throat to indicate that she'd heard her brown-eyed savior, but couldn't meet her eyes. "Emma, Henry's going to be just fine. And I know he only views you as stronger now, nothing else." Wondering in awe about how well Regina could read her mind, Emma chanced a look into her eyes. The older woman offered her a soft smile.

"Hi," she whispered, eliciting a returned smile from her love.

"Hey," Emma croaked.

"Can I dry you off and clean you up, sweetheart?" Regina asked gently. Emma hesitated. "No touch required," Regina assured her, heart breaking. Emma marveled at her insight, but shook her head.

"I want your touch," she mumbled, realizing in that moment how desperately she wanted, needed, Regina's gentle touch to heal her, to cleanse her, body and soul, from her irrepressible urge to scrub her skin so hard it would come off, to crawl out of her own body in disgust and shame. She longed for Regina's touch to make her feel whole, feel human, again.

Regina raised Emma's hands to her face and caressed them with her cheeks, knowing they could not kiss until Cora was subdued, ignoring the traces of vomit on Emma's hand. The contact sent drying warmth from her fingertips to her toes. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life touching you, always when you want it, and never when you don't, Emma Swan."

Emma leaned forward into the brunette's embrace, feeling grounded for the first time in a terribly long time. She felt Regina's spells coursing through her, cleaning and healing her skin where she had cut herself against the ropes and wiped her vomit, sealing the bloodied gashes where Hook had slammed her temple and mouth, mending her jeans and underwear, soothing the bruises he had forced into her body.

"Thank you," Emma whispered into Regina's neck, for so much more than drying her off, healing her wounds, and fixing her clothes. She pulled back from their hug, meeting Regina's eyes with the biggest smile she could manage. She wiped her hands across the brunette's face, willing the tears, mascara, and traces of Hook's blood away. To her slight surprise, her magic worked, cleansing her lover's face, soothing her sore knuckles, and bringing a smile to her full lips.

"I want to kiss you so badly," Emma whispered earnestly.

"Soon, my love," the older woman replied, caressing Emma's face gently.

"Soon indeed." A bitter voice interrupted them as they heard matching _oomphs_ issue from the mouths of Snow and Charming as they were slammed and bound to opposite sides of the ship. The recovering lovers whipped around, standing up simultaneously as Regina magicked Henry back to their side.

Cora smiled calmly as she soaked in the moment, at once relishing and resenting the fear in her daughter's eyes.


	21. What Happens to Hook

What little color had returned to Emma's face drained immediately. Cora sauntered over to the women with a fixed smile on her face that didn't reach her steady eyes. She scoffed as she took in the site of Hook, tied up and gagged on the floor. She locked eyes with Emma as she flicked her wrist and released his bonds. He stood slowly, rage and humiliation flooding him, pain still wracking his body from Regina's punches and kicks.

"It seems you've been bested by Ms. Swan again, Hook," Cora intoned casually.

"Not by her, no. By your daughter. Whom, I was assured, was under a Sleeping Curse. With him." He jabbed his hookless stub in David's direction. His voice was much more shaky than Emma had ever heard it, but she tried not to think about that. About anything related to him.

"Yes well, now, Hook, things don't always go according to plan. As you well know."

Regina's breath was silent but rapid, eyes darting everywhere, trying to figure out a way out of this mess. Emma was constantly swallowing vomit, she knew, at the sound of Hook's voice, which was making her own blood boil beyond comprehension. She kept her hand steadily on Emma's arm, and Henry was touching his blonde mother's back.

A black cloud of smoke behind Cora caused all the adults to start and look towards the source of the magic. Henry, however, crawled quickly to the spot where Hook had dropped Emma's vials when Regina blasted him with magic and her fists. He scooped them up and pocketed them quickly before scooting back behind his mothers.

He then looked where all the adults' eyes were fixed: Rumpelstiltskin had magicked himself onto the ship, a sadistically calm grin on his face.

* * *

Henry tried to keep his face neutral as he watched Hook frantically look for the dropped ink before retreating out of Rumpelstiltskin's line of sight. Gold's attention, however, was focused for the time being on the woman standing in front of him.

"Rumpelstiltskin." Cora's voice was musical and filled with ice. "Have you taken good care of my daughter these past decades?"

"Oh, it was never my plan to take care of her, Cora. As you well remember, knowing as you did the lengths I went to teach her." Cora's eyes narrowed as Regina's widened.

"Mother! You - you _knew_?"

"Oh, you foolish girl," Cora scoffed, "of course I _knew_. You stole my book from under my pillow, child, and imagined I was unaware? Mothers always know, Regina."

She advanced on Regina menacingly. The younger woman lifted her chin slightly, defiantly. Preparedly. Her slim, strong arms kept Henry behind her and Emma.

Cora continued. "What I didn't know was that while he helped you understand the need for power in ways you never accepted from me, the snake was turning you against me."

Emma reflected sadly on how similarly both of the women sounded when they called Rumpelstiltskin a snake. She willed Regina to feel the support she was sending her, and marveled momentarily that no matter how closely connected you are with someone, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, or some combination thereof, every moment of their existence is something that you can never quite begin to fathom. You could be holding hands or making love, but you still occupy fundamentally distinct and impenetrable universes. _Maybe love is the portal through all of our different universes_, she mused. _Gods, this fairy tale stuff is really getting to me_. She willed herself to tune back into the conversation, which was rapidly becoming a confrontation.

"Oh, I didn't have to do that, dearie," Rumpelstiltskin interjected. "You'd already succeeded in that particular area."

Cora changed directions and advanced instead on her old teacher, the man who had brought her her daughter. Her voice was deathly low, and Emma reached out for Henry's hand as she felt him shiver at the malice in her tone. Snow and Charming squeamed painfully against their bonds, which had tightened in the midst of Cora's wrath.

"Oh, _I _pushed my daughter away from me, did I, imp? And where, pray tell, is your son, Rumpelstiltskin?"

The next few moments flew by in a flash. Henry's hand wrenched out of Emma's as he sprinted forward to stand in front of Cora, preventing Gold - who had conjured a ball of blue fire in his hand at her taunt - from having a clear shot at her. Cora didn't bother stopping the boy, didn't thrust him aside as she had done to Emma when she had tried to help Mary Margaret.

Regina realized why Cora allowed Henry to stand in front of her at the same moment Emma did: Cora thought that her grandson's intention was to protect her from Rumpelstiltskin's physical retaliation. Regina felt the pleased laughter building in Cora's throat as the boy uncapped the purple vial with his teeth and stood in front of Cora with his back towards her, looking the enraged Dark One in the face.

"_Henry, get out of the way!_" Rumpel shouted as Cora's laugh blossomed, thinking she had won over her grandson in a way that she had never won over her own daughter.

Henry set his face, determined, as he jerked the vial over his shoulder, spattering some of its contents onto Cora. A blueish glow settled over her entire being: the ink had immobilized her powers.

"I'll throw some on you, too, Mr. Gold, if you don't put that fire ball away," Henry said, his voice childish but steady, mild but firm rather than aggressively threatening.

Gold's eyes widened in shock and grudging admiration. He looked into the young boy's eyes and saw ghosts of Bae's. He slowly lowered his fire ball, extinguishing it with his faded rage.

"Nice work, kid!" Emma high-fived her son as Regina tried not to roll her eyes in amusement. She stared at Cora's now powerless figure, seething in rage and defeat. Whatever she was about to say or do, however, was interrupted by the sudden slamming of Hook's body onto the deck in front of Rumpelstiltskin. Done with one enemy, the Dark One had clearly decided to move onto the next.

* * *

"Come to skin your crocodile, _Captain_?" he asked menacingly as Snow and Charming stood slowly, their bonds released once Cora's powers were relinquished. "You're not making much progress, it seems. Bested by a ten-year-old lad, I see. You're moving up in the world." Gold dug the heel of his shoe into Hook's throat.

Henry buried himself into Regina's chest. She held his face into her, protecting him from the sight. "Rumpel," she tried cautiously, hating Hook but not wanting Henry to see any more violence than he already had.

"You stay out of this, _Your Majesty_," the Dark One hissed, twisting his foot down further. Hook was making strangled choking noises, trying to speak.

"Say again, _Captain_?"

"_Rumpelstiltskin_!" The sound of heels running on wooden boards, carefully avoiding cracks, turned everyone's heads yet again.

Belle was sprinting towards the broken men, closely followed by Ruby. "Rumpelstiltskin, let him up. Please. You promised me you wouldn't give into your hate."

"I promised you nothing! I remember none of this!"

Regina glanced at Ruby urgently. Snow White's best friend nodded and Regina stepped forward, trusting Emma to hold Henry. She put one hand on Red's temples and the other on Rumpelstiltskin's. She closed her eyes and let Rumpelstiltskin's memories of Belle flood through the woman back to him. After several seconds, he wrenched out of the contact, panting slightly. He stared at Belle wildly, remembering his love for her.

"But you love _her_!" he spat with disdain, gesturing roughly at Ruby and digging his heel deeper into Hook's throat.

"Love is _layered_, Rumpel. But promises aren't. You made me a promise, and I need you to keep it, or whatever we have will surely be destroyed. Please Rumpelstiltskin: you don't have to kill him."

"You don't know what he's done to me, Belle, what he took from me!"

"No, I don't, but I do know that if he hadn't, you wouldn't be who you are, and we never would have met. Surely just as there is a price for magic, there is a price for vengeance. I don't want to watch you pay it, Rumpelstiltskin. Please. Don't kill him."

"Oh dear, I think I might vomit," Cora interjected.

All, even Hook - who could only move his eyes to see her - shot her a look of exasperated disdain.

Rumpelstiltskin spent a long moment staring at Belle. The entire ship - the air itself - held its breath. At long last, he lifted his foot from his enemy's throat roughly, disgustedly.

Hook slithered away on his back slightly before standing up shakily, looking like he couldn't quite comprehend why two women he had tried to kill would prevent others from killing him. Too many women were too much like Mila. And too much unlike her. A sudden thought occurred to him.

"Henry. Lad. Please."

"You have no right to talk to our son!" Regina started, infuriated, but Henry touched her arm to hold off her attack.

Henry stared at Hook, disgusted, for several long moments before realizing what he was asking for. He blinked and slowly withdrew his hand from his pocket, withdrawing the bronze vial Ursula had given Emma. The boy tossed it to the man silently.

"I wouldn't have left you on top of that beanstalk, Emma Swan," he almost whispered as he sprinted to the edge of his ship and dove into the ocean, body transforming back decades before their eyes just before he splashed into the cold Maine waters. _Only he would take a swig of potion while mid-dive. _Regina let her eyes flutter closed and sent a spell his way, knowing it would suffice to help him breathe and swim - even in child-form - until he found merpeople that would take him in. She bit her lip as she did so, not remembering until that moment what it felt like to watch someone's life begin instead of end.

* * *

Deprived of his prey and satisfied that the squid ink would keep Cora at bay, Rumpelstiltskin was convinced by Belle to leave the ship with her and Ruby, reasoning that his presence would only further provoke Cora's taunts and thus, everyone's anger.

The three didn't notice the figure of a balding man with thin white hair and a cruelly hopeful glint in his eye just off the dock.

The man watched them leave silently, victoriously. Rumpelstiltskin was slippery, and his presence would only complicate things.

King George smiled as he crept onto Hook's ship, intent on rescuing the woman he'd once loved.

Intent on rescuing Cora.


	22. King George Returns for Cora

In the awkwardly silent wake of Hook's departure and Rumpelstiltskin's retreat, the past set in: with Hook gone and the hateful banter between Gold and Cora silenced, the realization that it was just family now - one big, twisted, dictionary-definition dysfunctional family - was washing over all, Swan, Mills, and Charming. Snow's stomach churned as she tried not to think about the fact that the woman who had spent so much of her life trying to destroy everything she held dear was now holding her daughter's hand like she would never let her go. _And maybe she won't_.

Charming was the first to speak, beginning to discuss plans for Cora's execution. Surely, she was even worse than Regina, and since no cell in Storybrooke could be trusted to hold her, she must be put to death. Emma and Regina exchanged uncomfortable glances as Emma listened to her knightly father begin to play executioner. Again: _Then it goes away. Then we're safe_.

"No!" Most of the adults turned wide-eyed to look at Henry, who had cut his grandfather off mid-sentence. Cora smirked, her hope that she had somehow won over Henry returning. Regina glared at her before turning her attention to her son.

"Wait. You can't kill her. And I don't want you to lock her up forever, either. No one deserves to be that lonely. That's just doing to her what she did to all of you." He looked around at the grown-ups wildly.

"Henry, you're still so young, you don't understand - " Snow began.

"No." Emma cut into the conversation, her voice dripping with Henry's passion. "He understands better than any of us. When you were all cursed, Henry believed. He believed enough to go to Boston all by himself to look for me. He believed enough to stroll into a mine alone with nothing but Apollo bars and a flashlight. He believed enough to eat that damned apple turnover. He believed enough to break through that barrier in the ocean, and he believed enough to get us through everything we went through down there. He's the one who immobilized Cora and make Gold stand down. And all this time, we were thinking he was just being childish. But maybe that's the _point._ Maybe being a child, seeing the world like that, is some kind of... of _magic_. I never was able to do that as a kid, and it's the best thing Henry's given me. When did we stop caring about that?"

She knelt next to her son, looking him in the eyes and taking both of his hands into hers. "Henry, I never want you to stop believing just like a kid. But I need you to know why your belief, your faith, your imagination, are so important." She took a deep breath. Regina watched her unblinkingly. "Kid, for eleven months I was locked in a cage. Everything I did was watched, every emotion I showed treated like a threat. I wasn't human." She took a shaky breath and continued, needing him to know. "I was chained up while you were being born, because most states let prisons do that."

She saw the glistening of tears flash down Regina's face. She forced herself to keep speaking. "And I was in a prison that treated you _well_. Some people... lots of people... for years, Henry, they lock them in a room, a bright room, for 23 hours of every day, nothing to do, no communication, nothing but your regrets and cracks in the wall to memorize and torture you. I knew a guy who'd done three years like that." She paused, her eyes miles and years away.

She looked up at her mother. "Isn't that what you said that netherworld was like for you? Just being alone with your thoughts, missing everyone you love? Don't you understand? I don't care what anyone did: no one deserves that. If it were up to you, Regina would be locked up too, or maybe even dead, but she just helped rescue all of us, didn't she, David? Regina's done a lot of - just - awful things too, but it doesn't make her unworthy of love. It just makes you need it more." She reached out and caressed Regina's hand as she murmured that last part softly to her. Tears of awe, pride, and gratitude were streaming out of her love's unblinking eyes. Emma looked back towards her parents.

"Henry's right." She squeezed his hand proudly. "We have enough of this ink stuff to keep Cora powerless for a long time. We can use that time to figure out what to do. Maybe get her settled somewhere without magic, no portals, give her a second chance, I don't know. But we can't just keep her in a cage, and we certainly can't kill her." She looked back at Regina. "Everyone deserves a new beginning."

She stopped for breath, wondering at her sudden eloquence, a little embarrassed. Maybe she was more similar to - and more different than - her mother than she thought. Charming was looking at Snow, who was staring at Emma with an expression similar to the one she wore when she had told them she wasn't going to let Regina die. Emma held her mother's gaze, unable to tell if it was pride or fearful revulsion in her eyes. Maybe both. Snow White was the first to look away. Henry squeezed Emma's hand, and she looked at him. He was beaming through tears, an odd expression on his face.

Cora was staring at the blonde as though she were a complex puzzle to solve, a piece of meat to figure out how best to season, a woman who was showing she and her daughter, both of whom had tried to kill her (and worse), more open love than she had ever known. She raked her eyes over to look at her daughter, who had squatted beside Emma and had leaned her forehead against the blonde's in affection, carefully avoiding her mother's eyes.

Was this not what Cora always wanted for her daughter? Someone who enhanced her daughter's power, who supported her strengths and compensated for her weaknesses? _No_. This - this - this self-righteous criminal girl simply couldn't match the description. _Or could she?_

"Emma," Charming began carefully, "I hear what you're saying. I do. But Cora is _so _dangerous - "

Regina stood up quickly, feeling betrayed by the man whom she had just gone through hell and back with, and Emma stiffened, nervous.

"But don't you know, _Charming_, that they locked your daughter away for eleven months under the justification that she was too dangerous to be free, that she needed to be punished? Or didn't you read the manual while you were Acting Sheriff?"

Both Snow and David opened their mouths to respond, but Regina pressed on. Emma and Henry glanced at each other, perversely excited but also nervous for David. "Is this really want you want to model for your daughter, Prince Charming? To be willing enough to be kind to me when you had no more power than I did in that netherworld, but to insist, the moment you get your leverage back, that we lock my mother away forever to rot in the same way that you would have done to me, were it not for Emma and Henry?"

At her mention of their names, her voice softened. "I know the model that my parents gave me." She gestured at Cora without looking at her. "And I know what I've done in the past, David, but I also know what I want to model for my son now. And you? What kind of world do you want to give your daughter?"

Emma's eyes brimmed with tears against her will. Regina and David did not unlock eyes, standing stiff at attention, eye-to-eye outside the cage in question, Evil Queen against Fair Prince, lover against father, both refusing to back down. Henry could taste the silence. David broke it.

"Do you agree, at least, that she needs to be contained until we figure out a more sustainable solution?"

Regina nodded tentatively, glancing at Emma for guidance, who stood and looked her lover's mother full in the face.

"We'll move you to an actual room, not a cage. No bars. We'll keep giving you the ink to keep you from hurting anyone. You'll get your own clothes and books or whatever you want, as long as Regina looks them over to make sure you can't use them to escape somehow. I'll make sure you're treated with respect. Sound okay to you?"

"It turns out that my daughter-in-law is most gracious. Quite more so than any _man_ I could have imagined for her."

Emma cocked an eyebrow, fighting amusement at the coolness that Regina had apparently inherited. "I'm already protecting you, Cora, you don't need to kiss up to me."

"No, I gather that's my daughter's arena."

Emma grimaced ruefully, murmuring something about "parents," "in-laws," and "wasn't missing much." Everyone was far too confused by their combination of outrage and amusement towards Cora's commentary to notice that King George had slipped up behind the Mills-Swan-Charming family and was swinging a sword 'round towards his faux son's neck.

* * *

Snow saw the glint of metal out of the corner of her eye and, lightning fast, dove to pick up her husband's dropped sword, screaming as she did so. "David, watch out!"

The Princess slammed the blade up to meet the King's, the metallic clash ringing loudly in Charming's ears as Regina and Emma dragged Henry out of the way of the impending sword fight. Cora's eyes expanded like an exploding sun as she looked on, unable to step in without her magic, eyes feasting on the man she's been torn from long ago.

The girl who had become Snow White smashed her husband's sword into the blade of the man who had forced her to tell her lover she loved him not; poisoned her; killed her love's mother; and sold them both to the woman who was now her daughter's lover. She decided not to focus on that last part at the moment: anger was a much better ally in a sword fight than was pure, utter _what-the-fuckedness_.

The older man chuckled aggressively as he calmly met her blows. "You let your woman do your fighting now, I see, _Charming_," he mocked as he met Snow's eyes above their blades, which were locked in front of their faces.

"This _woman_ has a _name_, Your _Highness_," Snow mocked in her turn, swinging aggressively at his waist, forcing him to slide out of the way to meet her blow in time. "Surely you remember it? You stole James' letter to me: I believe that's how this all began." Snow took advantage of his awkward positioning to level a strong kick straight into his chest.

Emma blinked a few times, marveling at those kicks of her mother's, not to mention how easily she sifted through all her Charming's various names and identities, loving each of them. The blonde glanced down at Henry, who seemed nervous but not completely terrified. Regina was watching the battle with her mouth wide open, grudging respect for Snow White attacking her slowly and with irritating persistence. Cora's eyes were glowing with resentful appreciation for George, and David's eyes were hardened with anger and softened by faith in his wife's abilities, moving slightly in time with each move she made. Emma was oddly reminded of watching a teenager play video games, flinching along with their avatar.

King George laughed humorlessly as he recovered from the blow to his chest, stepping back into Snow's space and swinging, hard, towards her neck. Their blades met inches from Snow's face. "That's not how it began, you ignorant girl. It began well before that. But rest assured: this will end it."

He spun unexpectedly, surprisingly limber for a man of his age and build, slamming into her chest with his elbow. Snow coughed, spluttering for breath as she readied her sword again, but not soon enough. In her moment of stunned recovery, George had opened the satchel he had tied across his chest, pulling out a mess of soft white yarn with purple embroidery.

"What the hell?" Emma exclaimed, her voice strangled with shock. _What the hell was George doing with her baby blanket?_

He merely smiled as he put his hand on Cora's shoulder, who kissed him fiercely. Regina's eyes widened as they hadn't since she was a blushing teenage girl being trained in the ways of hatred by Rumpelstiltskin. Snow paused at the sight, her eyes almost as gaping as Regina's, her mouth open in mild disgust.

King George broke away from the kiss with a smile and tossed the baby blanket into the nearby water, rapidly uncorking a bottle of ashes and pouring them on it. Emma realized with a jolt what was about to happen. "No!" She rushed forward but tripped on the sword George had abandoned at her feet while embracing Cora.

The ocean - still containing the water the Cora had conjured from Lake Nostos - split open, swirling into a whirlpool. "The hat's ashes!" David murmured as the ship began to swirl down into the abyss that the portal was forming. They were all going to enter the portal to who knew where.

"I'm so glad you're coming with us, my daughter. Away from this pitiful town, we can start anew together." Cora smiled back at her daughter calmly as she placed her hand in the crook of George's arm, leaning over the edge of the ship to gaze into the portal below, knowing Emma still had the compass in her pocket and it would guide them safely to a new land.

But Regina had begun trembling, glowing green again, eyes returning to a hazy purple. Her proximity to a portal - formed by the lingering magic of Emma's baby blanket (such a powerful remnant of their land, having been one of the only things to survive the Curse), Lake Nostos' waters, and the ashes of Jefferson's hat - had recharged the fairy magic within her, which she hadn't completely expended in her last encounter with Cora.

Emma reached out for Regina's shoulder, alarmed, shunting even more powerful magic into her luminescent lover. Regina thrust her arms forward, shooting all of the magic inside of her towards the portal, towards Cora and George.

"I'm sorry, Mother. Goodbye." She forced these words through her glowing lips as the pain of all that energy flaming through her took over most of her senses. The swell of green fumes that swam out of Regina's fingertips overwhelmed her mother and the man who loved her, raking the ship to a halt in its descent while tossing Cora and George overboard, into the portal, which - several long, long moments later - Regina closed, exhausted but satisfied in the knowledge that she had spewed out all of her energy to ensure that the land Cora and George were going to had no magic, that the portal and the objects that had created it would be irreparably damaged after the trip. She had accomplished what she'd long wanted: her mother was gone, but not dead. And, quite possibly, she even had a chance at True Love. Whatever that could mean to two people as power-hungry and vengeance-driven as they.

Regina almost smiled as she collapsed, hard, onto the deck of the still swaying ship, Emma's strong arms breaking her fall and lowering her softly into her lap.

"_Regina!_"

As the voice and gentle hands of her lover washed over her, Regina's breath stopped, the energy needed to keep her lungs cycling torn from her.

There was nothing more but darkness.


	23. Saving the Queen, Saving the Savior

"Regina! _REGINA!_"

Emma shook Regina as Regina had years ago shaken Daniel: gently, lovingly. Terrified.

She laid trembling fingers on the lifeless woman's pulse point. There was nothing.

Snow and Charming exchanged solemn glances above Emma's head, Snow still holding the sword slack at her side. David knelt next to Henry, putting his arm around him gently. The boy only had eyes for Regina.

Old fury at the former mayor stoked up in Emma's core, enflaming her eyes and strangling her words with thick passion. "You _don't_ get to do this,Regina. You don't get to leave me like this."

Not caring that her parents were watching, and knowing that her son would love this anyway, Emma took Regina's face tenderly into her hands. The Savior leaned down and placed her mouth warmly on the Queen's full lips, savoring the gentle, miraculous crackling of energy that rippled between them. A golden pulse surged from their union, not just in an expanding circle, but forming all-encompassing bubble that swelled throughout the entire land, sea, and space surrounding them, penetrating every surface and mending, a little more, every broken heart, every bruise, every hopelessness, and every hatred.

Regina's spirit flooded back into her body, dead moments before, now teeming with the divine energy of Emma's love, revitalized and reborn.

She breathed deeply as Emma's lips drew away from hers. Forest top met forest floor in their eyes as green met brown and hope met redemption, neither spirit knowing or caring which of them was redeemed and which of them was saved. They found the answer in each other's gazes: _both_.

"I don't know what I ever did to deserve you," Emma murmured to her Savior Queen.

"Nor do I," Regina responded, her eyes and lips smiling with a genuine happiness that Emma had never seen before, her voice sounding as open, light, youthful, and full of hope and excitement as it had when she was a teenager.

Henry shivered in an excited, unbidden jig of celebration as Regina asked a question of Emma's eyes, which were dancing with delight and ecstasy. The younger woman smiled broadly in response, knowing full well what Regina was asking. Lips curving into her own deepened smile, the older woman pulled Emma's face back down to hers, sitting up without breaking their kiss, tongue venturing tentatively out of red lips to explore her love's warm, waiting mouth, which received her eagerly and danced with her in growing ecstasy. Hands tangled in hair and ventured under shirts, and neither woman knew or cared whose hand was on whose smooth stomach, whose strong back, whose mussed hair, whose tear-stained face.

* * *

Snow saw the figures first, floating through the air towards the ship, as she was desperately looking anywhere but the floor planks beneath her where her daughter knelt, passionately kissing the Evil Queen.

Charming was thoroughly confused, having been asleep while Emma and Regina had taken each others' hearts. Snow whispered to him that it was alright, and watched with an open mouth as the hearts of the lovers and their son silently streamed onto the ship, like enchanted confetti seeking its target of the loneliest of celebration participants. Henry stood up straight as his heart seeped back into his chest, curse broken as he took a deep breath in, every part of his being smiling widely.

Emma and Regina barely noticed when their hearts crossed back into their bodies; both had already been soaring through all the realms together, magic passing between them with each renewed touch.

Emma moaned happily into their kiss, and the sound stoked an uncontrollable fire in Regina's core.

Uncontrollable, that is, until Snow White decided she'd had enough: she cleared her throat loudly and doused both women's arousals. Emma looked up, happier than she'd ever known but somehow sheepish, still wrapped in her Queen's healing, strongly gentle, and powerfully loving arms. Regina, Henry noticed with a delighted giggle, stared evenly up at Snow with a look that was unmistakably a smug declaration of victory, one eyebrow cocked challengingly, lips swollen and curved upward with her daughter's passion, eyes dancing with amused satisfaction at Snow's discomfort.

The woman with the pixie-cut was clearly at a loss for words, and no one had ever seen her husband's face quite so red.

There were a lot of stories they all had to catch up on, but this love story, Emma thought ruefully, was going to be by far the most awkward to tell.

And the most joyful to continue.

* * *

_Well, that's all, folks! Thank you so much for sticking with me on this journey, especially those of you who have been so supportive, inspiring, and encouraging with your reviews. I hope I did justice to the characters, to magic, to hope, to humor, to adventure, and to love! (And remember, no matter what they do tonight and beyond with the actual series: EMMA INVITED HER! :D) _


End file.
